Romansh is a descendant of the spoken Latin language of the Roman Empire, which by the 5th century AD replaced the Celtic and Raetic languages previously spoken in the area. Romansh retains a small number of words from these languages. Romansh has also been strongly influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retreated to its current area over the centuries, being replaced in other areas by Alemannic and Bavarian dialects. The earliest writing identified as Romansh dates from the 10th or 11th century, although major works did not appear until the 16th century, when several regional written varieties began to develop. During the 19th century the area where the language was spoken declined, but the Romansh speakers had a literary revival and started a language movement dedicated to halting the decline of the language.

In the 2000 Swiss census, 35,095 people (of whom 27,038 live in the canton of Grisons) indicated Romansh as the language of "best command", and 61,815 as a "regularly spoken" language.[4] In 2010, Switzerland switched to a yearly system of assessment that uses a combination of municipal citizen records and a limited number of surveys.[5] Based on this yearly system, the number of people aged 15 and above reporting Romansh as their main language was 36,622 in 2012.[1] Spoken by around 0.9% of Switzerland's 7.7 million inhabitants, Romansh is Switzerland's least-used national language in terms of number of speakers and ranks eleventh in terms of most spoken languages in Switzerland overall.[6] The language area and number of speakers of Romansh have been continually shrinking, though language use remains vigorous in certain areas.

Romansh is divided into five different regional dialects (Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Putèr, and Vallader), each with its own standardized written language. In addition, a pan-regional variety called Rumantsch Grischun was introduced in 1982, which is controversial among Romansh speakers.

Romansh is a Romance language descending from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of the Roman Empire. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out because of its peripheral location, which has resulted in several archaic features. Another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long language contact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser extent the syntax of Romansh. Romansh belongs to the Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages, which includes languages such as French, Occitan, and Lombard. The main feature placing Romansh within the Gallo-Romance languages is the fronting of Latin /u/ to [y] or [i], as seen in Latin muru(m) 'wall', which is mür(help·info) or mir(help·info) in Romansh.

Palatalization of Latin K and G in front of A, as in Latin canem 'dog', which is tgaun(help·info) in Sursilvan, tgang in Surmiran, and chaun(help·info) in Putèr and Vallader (the difference between ⟨tg⟩ and ⟨ch⟩ being purely orthographic, as both represent /tɕ/). This sound change is partially absent in some varieties of Romansh, however, especially in Sursilvan, where it may have been reversed at some point: Sursilvan casa(help·info) and Vallader chasa(help·info) 'house'.

Pluralisation with "-s" suffix, derived from the LatinAccusative case, as in buns chavals 'good horses' as opposed to Italian buoni cavalli.

Another defining feature of the Romansh language is the use of unstressed vowels. All unstressed vowels (except /a/) disappeared.[8]

The three proposed Rhaeto-Romance languages Romansh, Ladin, and Friulan

Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should compose a separate "Rhaeto-Romance" subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, known as the Questione ladina. Some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. The Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli first made the claim in 1873.[9] The other position holds that any similarities between these three languages can be explained through their relative geographic isolation, which shielded them from certain linguistic changes. By contrast, the Gallo-Italic varieties of Northern Italy were more open to linguistic influences from the South. Linguists who take this position often point out that the similarities between the languages are comparatively few.[10] This position was first introduced by the Italian dialectologist Carlo Battisti.

This linguistic dispute became politically relevant for the Italian irredentist movement. Italian nationalists interpreted Battisti's hypothesis as implying that Romansh, Friulan and Ladin were not separate languages but rather Italian dialects. They used this as an argument to claim the territories for Italy where these languages were spoken.[11] From a sociolinguistic perspective, however, this question is largely irrelevant. The speakers of Romansh have always identified as speaking a language distinct from both Italian and other Romance varieties.[12]

Historical distribution of the dialects of Romansh, German, and Italian in Grisons. It should be noted that so-called "Italian dialects" are in fact dialects of Lombard, and more similar to Romansh than to Italian:

Sursilvan

Tuatschin

Sutsilvan

Surmiran

Putèr

Vallader

Jauer

Romansh comprises a group of closely related dialects, which are most commonly divided into five different varieties, each of which has developed a standardized form. These standardized regional standards are referred to as idioms in Romansh to distinguish them from the local vernaculars, which are referred to as dialects.[13] These dialects form a dialect continuum without clear-cut divisions. Historically a continuous speech area, this continuum has now been ruptured by the spread of German, so that Romansh is now geographically divided into at least two non-adjacent parts.

1.Sursilvan (rm. sursilvan(help·info); derived from the name of the Surselva-region, which itself is derived from sur 'above' and selva 'forest') – spoken in the Vorderrhein (Rain anteriur) valley, including the Lumnezia, Foppa, and Cadi. It is the most widely spoken variety, with 17,897 people within the Surselva region (54.8%) naming Romansh as a habitually spoken language in the Swiss census of 2000.[14]

2.Sutsilvan (derived from sut 'below' and selva 'forest') – spoken in the Hinterrhein (Rain posteriur) valley, including Plaun, Heinzenberg, Domleschg, and Schams. It is the least widely spoken Romansh variety, with 1,111 people within its historical area (15.4%) naming Romansh as a habitually spoken language.[14] It has become extinct across much of its historical area since the turn of the 20th century.

4.Putèr (rm. putèr(help·info); probably originally a nickname derived from put 'porridge', meaning 'porridge-eaters'.[15]) – spoken in the Upper Engadine valley (Engiadin' Ota) west of Zernez. Romansh was named by 5,497 people within the Upper Engadine valley (30%) as a habitually spoken language in the census of 2000.[14]

5.Vallader (rm. vallader(help·info); derived from val 'valley') – is spoken in the Lower Engadine valley (Engiadina Bassa) and the Val Müstair. It is the second most commonly spoken variety of Romansh, with 6,448 people in the Lower Engadine valley (79.2%) naming Romansh as a habitually spoken language in the census of 2000.[14]

Aside from these five major dialects, two additional varieties are often distinguished. One is the dialect of the Val Müstair, which is closely related to Vallader but often separately referred to as Jauer (derived from the personal pronoun jau 'I', i.e. 'the jau-sayers').[16] Less commonly distinguished is the dialect of Tujetsch and the Val Medel, which is markedly different from Sursilvan and is referred to as Tuatschin.[16] Additionally, the standardized variety Rumantsch Grischun, intended for pan-regional use, was introduced in 1982. The dialect of the Val Bregaglia is usually considered a variety of Lombard, and speakers use Italian as their written language, even though the dialect shares many features with the neighboring Putèr dialect of Romansh.[17]

As these varieties form a continuum with small transitions from each village to the next, there is no straightforward internal grouping of the Romansh dialects. The Romansh language area can be described best as consisting of two widely divergent varieties, Sursilvan in the west and the dialects of the Engadine in the east, with Sutsilvan and Surmiran forming a transition zone between them.[18] The Engadinese varieties Putèr and Vallader are often referred to as one specific variety known as Ladin (rm. ladin(help·info)), which is not to be confused with the closely related language in Italy's Dolomite mountains also known as Ladin. Sutsilvan and Surmiran are sometimes grouped together as Central Romansh (rm. Grischun central), and then grouped together with Sursilvan as "Rhenish Romansh" (in German, "Rheinischromanisch").

One feature that separates the Rhenish varieties from Ladin is the retention of the rounded front vowels /y/ and /ø/ (written ü and ö) in Ladin, which have been unrounded in the other dialects,[19] as in Ladin mür(help·info), Sursilvan mir(help·info), Surmiran meir ‘wall’ or Ladin chaschöl(help·info) to Rhenish caschiel(help·info) ‘cheese’. Another is the development of Latin -CT-, which has developed into /tɕ/ in the Rhenish varieties as in détg ‘said’ or fatg ‘did’, while developing into /t/ in Ladin (dit and fat). A feature separating Sursilvan from Central Romansh, however, involves the extent of palatalization of Latin /k/ in front of /a/, which is rare in Sursilvan but common in the other varieties:[19] Sursilvan casa(help·info), Sutsilvan tgea, Surmiran tgesa, Putèr chesa(help·info), and Vallader chasa(help·info) 'house'. Overall however, the Central Romansh varieties do not share many unique features, but rather connect Sursilvan and Ladin through a succession of numerous small differences from one village to the next.[20][21]

The dialects of Romansh are not always mutually comprehensible. Speakers of Sursilvan and Ladin, in particular, are usually unable to understand each other initially.[22] Because speakers usually identify themselves primarily with their regional dialect, many do not take the effort to attempt to understand unfamiliar dialects, and prefer to speak Swiss German with speakers of other varieties.[23] A common Romansh identity is not widespread outside of intellectual circles, even though this has been changing among the younger generation.[24]

Romansh originates from the spoken Latin brought to the region by Roman soldiers, merchants, and officials following the conquest of the modern-day Grisons area by the Romans in 15 BC. Before that, the inhabitants spoke Celtic and Raetic languages, with Raetic apparently being spoken mainly in the Lower Engadine valley. Traces of these languages survive mainly in toponyms, including village names such as Tschlin, Scuol, Savognin, Glion, Breil/Brigels, Brienz/Brinzauls, Purtenza, and Trun. Additionally, a small number of pre-Latin words have survived in Romansh, mainly concerning animals, plants, and geological features unique to the Alps, such as camutsch 'chamois' and grava 'scree'.

Romansh during the early Middle Ages

lost to German and Lombard, 700–1100

Romansh-speaking area, c. 1100

It is unknown how rapidly the Celtic and Raetic inhabitants were Romanized following the conquest of Raetia. Some linguists assume that the area was rapidly Romanized following the Roman conquest, whereas others think that this process did not end until the 4th or 5th century, when more thoroughly Romanized Celts from farther north fled south to avoid invasions by Germanic tribes.[25] The process was certainly complete and the pre-Roman languages extinct by the 5th–6th century, when Raetia became part of the Ostrogothic Kingdom. Around 537 AD, the Ostrogoths handed over the province of Raetia Prima to the Frankish Empire, which continued to have local rulers administering the so-called Duchy of Chur. However, after the death of the last Victorid ruler, Bishop Tello, around 765, Charlemagne assigned a Germanic duke to administer the region. Additionally, the Diocese of Chur was transferred by the Roman Catholic Church from the Archdiocese of Milan to the Diocese of Mainz in 843. The combined effect was a cultural reorientation towards the German-speaking north, especially as the ruling élite now comprised almost entirely speakers of German.[26]

At the time, Romansh was spoken over a much wider area, stretching north into the present-day cantons of Glarus and St. Gallen, to the Walensee in the northwest, and Rüthi and the Alpine Rhine Valley in the northeast. In the east, parts of modern-day Vorarlberg were Romansh-speaking, as were parts of Tyrol. The northern areas, called Lower Raetia, became German-speaking by the 12th century;[27] and by the 15th century, the Rhine Valley of St. Gallen and the areas around the Wallensee were entirely German-speaking.[26] This language shift was a long, drawn-out process, with larger, central towns adopting German first, while the more peripheral areas around them remained Romansh-speaking longer. The shift to German was caused in particular by the influence of the local German-speaking élites and by German-speaking immigrants from the north, with the lower and rural classes retaining Romansh longer.[28]

In addition, beginning around 1270, the German-speaking Walser began settling in sparsely populated or uninhabited areas within the Romansh-speaking heartland. The Walser sometimes expanded into Romansh-speaking areas from their original settlements, which then often became German-speaking, such as Davos, Schanfigg, the Prättigau, Schams, and Valendas, which became German-speaking by the 14th century.[29] In rare cases, these Walser settlements were eventually assimilated by their Romansh-speaking neighbors, for instance, Oberhalbstein and Medel and Tujetsch in the Surselva region.[30]

The Germanization of Chur had particular long-term consequences. Even though the city had long before ceased to be a cultural center of Romansh, the spoken language of the capital of the Diocese of Chur continued to be Romansh until the 15th century.[31] After a fire in 1465 which virtually destroyed the city, many German-speaking artisans who had been called in to help repair the damage settled there, causing German to become the majority language. In a chronicle written in 1571–72, Durich Chiampell mentions that Romansh was still spoken in Chur roughly a hundred years before, but had since then rapidly given way to German and was now not much appreciated by the inhabitants of the city.[26] Many linguists regard the loss of Chur to German as a crucial event. According to Sylvia Osswald, for example, it occurred precisely at a time when the introduction of the printing press could have led to the adoption of the Romansh dialect of the capital as a common written language for all Romansh speakers.[32] Other linguists such as Jachen Curdin Arquint remain skeptical of this view, however, and assume that the various Romansh-speaking regions would still have developed their own separate written standards.[33]

Instead, several regional written varieties of Romansh began appearing during the 16th century. Gian Travers wrote the first surviving work in Romansh, the Chianzun dalla guerra dagl Chiaste da Müs, in the Putèr dialect. This epic poem, written in 1527, describes the first Musso war, in which Travers himself had taken part.[34] Travers also translated numerous biblical plays into Romansh, though only the titles survive for many of them. Another early writer, Giachem Bifrun, who also wrote in Putèr, penned the first printed book in Romansh, a catechism published in 1552. In 1560 he published a translation of the New Testament: L'g Nuof Sainc Testamaint da nos Signer Jesu Christ.

Two years later, in 1562, another writer from the Engadine, Durich Chiampel, published the Cudesch da Psalms, a collection of church songs in the Vallader dialect. These early works are generally well written and show that the authors had a large amount of Romansh vocabulary at their disposal, contrary to what one might expect of the first pieces of writing in a language. Because of this, the linguist Ricarda Liver assumes that these written works built on an earlier, pre-literature tradition of using Romansh in administrative and legal situations, of which no evidence survives.[35] In their prefaces, the authors themselves often mention the novelty of writing Romansh, and discuss an apparently common prejudice that Romansh was a language that could not be written.[36]

Front page of Ilg Vêr Sulaz da pievel giuvan

The first writing in the Sursilvan and Sutsilvan dialects appears in the 17th century. As in the Engadine, these early works usually focused on religious themes, in particular the struggles between Protestants and Counter-Reformers. Daniel Bonifaci produced the first surviving work in this category, the catechism Curt mussameint dels principals punctgs della Christianevla Religiun, published in 1601 in the Sutsilvan dialect. A second edition, published in 1615, is closer to Sursilvan, however, and writings in Sutsilvan do not appear again until the 20th century. In 1611, Igl Vêr Sulaz da pievel giuvan ("The true joys of young people"), a series of religious instructions for Protestant youths, was published by Steffan Gabriel. Four years later, in 1615, a Catholic catechism, Curt Mussament, was published in response, written by Gion Antoni Calvenzano. The first translation of the New Testament into Sursilvan was published in 1648 by the son of Steffan Gabriel, Luci Gabriel.

The first complete translation of the Bible, the Bibla da Cuera, was published between 1717 and 1719. The Sursilvan dialect thus had two separate written varieties, one used by the Protestants with its cultural center around Ilanz, and a Catholic variety with the Disentis Abbey as its center. The Engadine dialect was also written in two varieties: Putèr in the Upper Valley and Vallader in the Lower Valley.[37] The Sutsilvan areas either used the Protestant variety of Sursilvan, or simply used German as their main written language. The Surmiran region began developing its own variety in the early 18th century, with a catechism being published in 1703, though either the Catholic variety of Sursilvan or Putèr was more commonly used there until the 20th century.[38]

In the 16th century, the language border between Romansh and German largely stabilized, and it remained almost unchanged until the late 19th century.[39] During this period, only isolated areas became German-speaking, mainly a few villages around Thusis and the village of Samnaun. In the case of Samnaun, the inhabitants adopted the Bavarian dialect of neighboring Tyrol, making Samnaun the only municipality of Switzerland where a Bavarian dialect is spoken. The Vinschgau in South Tyrol was still Romansh-speaking in the 17th century, after which it became entirely German-speaking because of the Counter-Reformation denunciation of Romansh as a "Protestant language".[40]

When Grisons became part of Switzerland in 1803, it had a population of roughly 73,000, of whom around 36,600 were Romansh speakers—many of them monolingual—living mostly within the Romansh-speaking valleys.[41] The language border with German, which had mostly been stable since the 16th century, now began moving again as more and more villages shifted to German. One cause was the admission of Grisons as a Swiss canton, which brought Romansh-speakers into more frequent contact with German-speakers. Another factor was the increased power of the central government of Grisons, which had always used German as its administrative language.[39] In addition, many Romansh-speakers migrated to the larger cities, which were German-speaking, while speakers of German settled in Romansh villages. Moreover, economic changes meant that the Romansh-speaking villages, which had mostly been self-sufficient, engaged in more frequent commerce with German-speaking regions. Also, improvements in the infrastructure made travel and contact with other regions much easier than it had been.[42]

Finally, the rise of tourism made knowledge of German an economic necessity in many areas, while the agricultural sector, which had been a traditional domain of Romansh, became less important. All this meant that knowledge of German became more and more of a necessity for Romansh speakers and that German became more and more a part of daily life. For the most part, German was seen not as a threat but rather as an important asset for communicating outside one's home region.[43] The common people frequently demanded better access to learning German.[39] When public schools began to appear, many municipalities decided to adopt German as the medium of instruction, as in the case of Ilanz, where German became the language of schooling in 1833, when the town was still largely Romansh-speaking.[44]

Some people even welcomed the disappearance of Romansh, in particular among progressives. In their eyes, Romansh was an obstacle to the economic and intellectual development of the Romansh people.[45] For instance, the priest Heinrich Bansi from Ardez wrote in 1797: "The biggest obstacle to the moral and economical improvement of these regions is the language of the people, Ladin [...] The German language could certainly be introduced with ease into the Engadine, as soon as one could convince the people of the immense advantages of it".[46] Others however, saw Romansh as an economic asset, since it gave the Romansh an advantage when learning other Romance languages. In 1807, for example, the priest Mattli Conrad wrote an article listing the advantages and disadvantages of Romansh:

The Romansh language is an immense advantage in learning so much more rapidly the languages derived from Latin of France, Italy, Spain etc, as can be seen with the Romansh youth, which travels to these countries and learns their language with ease. [...] We live in between an Italian and a German people. How practical is it, when one can learn the languages of both without effort?[47]

— Mattli Conrad – 1807

In response however, the editor of the newspaper added that:

According to the testimony of experienced and vigilant language teachers, while the one who is born Romansh can easily learn to understand these languages and make himself understood in them, he has great difficulties in learning them properly, since precisely because of the similarity, he mixes them so easily with his own bastardized language. [...] in any case, the conveniences named hold no weight against all the disadvantages that come from such an isolated and uneducated language.[48]

According to Mathias Kundert, this quote is a good example of the attitude of many German-speakers towards Romansh at the time. According to Mathias Kundert, while there was never a plan to Germanize the Romansh areas of Grisons, many German-speaking groups wished that the entire canton would become German-speaking. They were careful however, to avoid any drastic measures to that extent, in order not to antagonize the influential Romansh minority.[49]

The decline of Romansh over the 20th century can be seen through the results of the Swiss censuses. The decline in percentages is only partially due to the Germanization of Romansh areas, since the Romansh-speaking valleys always had a lower overall population growth than other parts of the canton.[50]

Starting in the mid-19th century however, a revival movement began, often called the "Rhaeto-Romansh renaissance". This movement involved an increased cultural activity, as well as the foundation of several organizations dedicated to protecting the Romansh language. In 1863, the first of several attempts was made to found an association for all Romansh regions, which eventually led to the foundation of the Società Retorumantscha in 1885.[52] In 1919, the Lia Rumantscha was founded to serve as an umbrella organization for the various regional language societies. Additionally, the role of Romansh in schooling was strengthened, with the first Romansh school books being published in the 1830s and 1840s. Initially, these were merely translations of the German editions, but by the end of the 19th century teaching materials were introduced which took the local Romansh culture into consideration. Additionally, Romansh was introduced as a subject in teacher's college in 1860 and was recognized as an official language by the canton in 1880.[52]

Around the same time, grammar and spelling guidelines began to be developed for the regional written dialects. One of the earliest was the Ortografia et ortoëpia del idiom romauntsch d'Engiadin'ota by Zaccaria Pallioppi, published in 1857. For Sursilvan, a first attempt to standardize the written language was the Ortografia gienerala, speculativa ramontscha by Baseli Carigiet, published in 1858, followed by a Sursilvan-German dictionary in 1882, and the Normas ortografias by Giachen Caspar Muoth in 1888. Neither of these guidelines managed to gather much support however. At the same time, the Canton published school books in its own variety. Sursilvan was then definitely standardized through the works of Gion Cahannes, who published Grammatica Romontscha per Surselva e Sutselva in 1924, followed by Entruidament devart nossa ortografia in 1927. The Surmiran dialect had its own norms established in 1903, when the Canton agreed to finance the school book Codesch da lectura per las scolas primaras de Surmeir, though a definite guideline, the Normas ortograficas per igl rumantsch da Surmeir, was not published until 1939. In the meantime, the norms of Pallioppi had come under criticism in the Engadine due to the strong influence of Italian in them. This led to an orthographic reform which was concluded by 1928, when the Pitschna introducziun a la nouva ortografia ladina ufficiala by Cristoffel Bardola was published. A separate written variety for Sutsilvan was developed in 1944 by Giuseppe Gangale.

Loss of the Romansh-speaking majority in modern times according to the Swiss censuses

before 1860

1870–1900

1910–1941

1950–1960

1970

1980–2000

Romansh majority in 2000

Around 1880, the entire Romansh-speaking area still formed a continuous geographical unit. But by the end of the century, the so-called "Central-Grisons language bridge" began to disappear.[53] From Thusis, which had become German-speaking in the 16th/17th century, the Heinzenberg and Domleschg valleys were gradually Germanized over the next decades. Around the turn of the century, the inner Heinzenberg and Cazis became German-speaking, followed by Rothenbrunnen, Rodels, Almens, and Pratval, splitting the Romansh area into two geographically non-connected parts. In the 1920s and 1930s the rest of the villages in the valley became mainly German-speaking, sealing the split.[54]

In order to halt the decline of Romansh, the Lia Rumantscha began establishing Romansh day care schools, called Scoletas, beginning in the 1940s with the aim of reintroducing Romansh to children. Although the Scoletas had some success – of the ten villages where Scoletas were established, the children began speaking Romansh amongst themselves in four, with the children in four others acquiring at least some knowledge of Romansh – the program ultimately failed to preserve the language in the valley.

A key factor was the disinterest of the parents, whose main motivation for sending their children to the Scoletas appears to have been that they were looked after for a few hours and given a meal every day, rather than an interest in preserving Romansh.[55] The other factor was that after entering primary school, the children received a few hours a week of Romansh instruction at best. As a result, the last Scoletas were closed in the 1960s with the exception of Präz, where the Scoleta remained open until 1979.[56]

In other areas, such as the Engadine and the Surselva, where the pressure of German was equally strong, Romansh was maintained much better and remained a commonly spoken language. According to the linguist Mathias Kundert, one important factor was the different social prestige of Romansh. In the Heinzenberg and Domleschg valleys, the elite had been German-speaking for centuries, so that German was associated with power and education, even though most people did not speak it, whereas Romansh was associated with peasant life. In the Engadine and the Surselva by contrast, the elite was itself Romansh-speaking, so that Romansh there was "not only the language spoken to children and cows, but also that of the village notable, the priest, and the teacher."[57] Additionally, Romansh schools had been common for several years before German had become a necessity, so that Romansh was firmly established as a medium of education.

Likewise, in the Upper Engadine, where factors such as increased mobility and immigration by German speakers were even stronger, Romansh was more firmly established as a language of education and administration, so that the language was maintained to a much greater extent. In Central Grisons, by contrast, German had been a central part of schooling since the beginning, and virtually all schools switched entirely to German as the language of instruction by 1900, with children in many schools being punished for speaking Romansh well into the 1930s.[58]

Early attempts to create a unified written language for Romansh include the Romonsch fusionau of Gion Antoni Bühler in 1867[59] and the Interrumantsch by Leza Uffer in 1958. Neither was able to gain much support, and their creators were largely the only ones actively using them.[60] In the meantime, the Romansh movement sought to promote the different regional varieties while promoting a gradual convergence of the five varieties, called the "avischinaziun".[61] In 1982, however, the then secretary of the Lia Rumantscha, a sociolinguist named Bernard Cathomas, launched a project for designing a pan-regional variety. The linguist Heinrich Schmid presented to the Lia Rumantscha the same year the rules and directives for this standard language under the name Rumantsch Grischun.[62] Schmid's approach consisted of creating a language as equally acceptable as possible to speakers of the different dialects, by choosing those forms which were found in a majority of the three strongest varieties: Sursilvan, Surmiran, and Vallader. The elaboration of the new standard was endorsed by the Swiss National Fund and carried out by a team of young Romansh linguists under the guidance of Georges Darms and Anna-Alice Dazzi-Gross.[63]

The Lia Rumantscha then began introducing Rumantsch Grischun to the public, announcing that it would be chiefly introduced into domains where only German was being used, such as official forms and documents, billboards, and commercials.[64] In 1984, the assembly of delegates of the head organization Lia Rumantscha decided to use the new standard language when addressing all Romansh-speaking areas of the Grisons.[65] From the very start, Rumansh Grischun has been implemented only on the basis of a decision of the particular institutions. In 1986, the federal administration began to use Rumantsch Grischun for single texts. The same year, however, several influential figures began to criticize the introduction of Rumantsch Grischun. Donat Cadruvi, at the time the president of the cantonal government, claimed that the Lia Rumantscha was trying to force the issue. Romansh writer Theo Candinas also called for a public debate on the issue, calling Rumantsch Grischun a "plague" and "death blow" to Romansh and its introduction a "Romansh Kristallnacht",[66] thus launching a highly emotional and bitter debate which would continue for several years.[66] The following year, Theo Candinas published another article titled Rubadurs Garmadis in which he compared the proponents of Rumantsch Grischun to Nazi thugs raiding a Romansh village and desecrating, destroying, and burning the Romansh cultural heritage.[67]

The proponents responded by labeling the opponents as a small group of archconservative and narrow-minded Sursilvans and CVP politicians among other things.[68] The debate was characterized by a heavy use of metaphors, with opponents describing Rumantsch Grischun as a "test-tube baby" or "castrated language". They argued that it was an artificial and infertile creation which lacked a heart and soul, in contrast to the traditional dialects. On the other side, proponents called on the Romansh people to nurture the "new-born" to allow it to grow, with Romansh writer Ursicin Derungs calling Rumantsch Grischun a "lungatg virginal" 'virgin language' that now had to be seduced and turned into a blossoming woman.[69]

The opposition to Rumantsch Grischun also became clear in the Swiss census of 1990, in which certain municipalities refused to distribute questionnaires in Rumantsch Grischun, requesting the German version instead.[70] Following a survey on the opinion of the Romansh population on the issue, the government of Grisons decided in 1996 that Rumantsch Grischun would be used when addressing all Romansh speakers, but the regional varieties could continue to be used when addressing a single region or municipality. In schools, Rumantsch Grischun was not to replace the regional dialects but only be taught passively.

The compromise was largely accepted by both sides. A further recommendation in 1999, known as the "Haltinger concept", also proposed that the regional varieties should remain the basis of the Romansh schools, with Rumantsch Grischun being introduced in middle school and secondary school.[71]

The government of Grisons then took steps to strengthen the role of Rumantsch Grischun as an official language. Since the cantonal constitution explicitly named Sursilvan and Engadinese as the languages of ballots, a referendum was launched to amend the relevant article.[72] In the referendum, which took place on June 10, 2001, 65% voted in favor of naming Rumantsch Grischun the only official Romansh variety of the Canton. Opponents of Rumantsch Grischun such as Renata Coray and Matthias Grünert argue, however, that if only those municipalities with at least 30% Romansh speakers were considered, the referendum would have been rejected by 51%, with an even larger margin if only those with at least 50% Romansh speakers were considered. They thus interpret the results as the Romansh minority having been overruled by the German-speaking majority of the canton.[73]

As of: September 2013

Municipalities that introduced Rumantsch Grischun as the language of instruction

Municipalities that use a regional variety as the language of instruction

Municipalities that introduced Rumantsch Grischun but since decided to revert to a regional variety

A major change in policy came in 2003, when the cantonal government proposed a number of spending cuts, including a proposal according to which new Romansh teaching materials would not be published except in Rumantsch Grischun from 2006 onwards, the logical result of which would be to abolish the regional varieties as languages of instruction. The cantonal parliament passed the measure in August 2003, even advancing the deadline to 2005. The decision was met by strong opposition, in particular in the Engadine, where teachers collected over 4,300 signatures opposing the measure,[74] followed by a second petition signed by around 180 Romansh writers and cultural figures,[75] including many who were supportive of Rumantsch Grischun but opposed its introduction as a language of instruction.

Opponents argued that Romansh culture and identity was transmitted through the regional varieties and not through Rumantsch Grischun and that Rumantsch Grischun would serve to weaken rather than strengthen Romansh, possibly leading to a switch to German-language schools and a swift Germanization of Romansh areas.[76]

The cantonal government refused to debate the issue again however, instead deciding on a three-step plan in December 2004 to introduce Rumantsch Grischun as the language of schooling, allowing the municipalities to choose when they would make the switch. The decision not to publish any new teaching materials in the regional varieties was not overturned, however, raising the question of what would happen in those municipalities that refused to introduce Rumantsch Grischun at all, since the language of schooling is decided by the municipalities themselves in Grisons.[77]

The teachers of the Engadine in particular were outraged over the decision, but those in the Surmeir were mostly satisfied. Few opinions were heard from the Surselva, which was interpreted either as support or resignation, depending in the viewpoint of the observer.[78]

In early 2011, however, a group of opponents in the Surselva and the Engadine founded the association Pro Idioms, demanding the overturning of the government decision of 2003 and launching numerous local initiatives to return to the regional varieties as the language of instruction. In April 2011, Riein became the first municipality to vote to return to teaching in Sursilvan,[81] followed by an additional 4 in December, and a further 10 in early 2012, including Val Müstair, which had been the first to introduce Rumantsch Grischun. As of September 2013, all municipalities in the Surselva, with the exception of Pitasch, have decided to return to teaching in Sursilvan.

Supporters of Rumantsch Grischun then announced that they would take the issue to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland[82] and announced their intention to launch a cantonal referendum to enshrine Rumantsch Grischun as the language of instruction.[83]

The Lia Rumantscha opposes these moves and now supports a model of coexistence in which Rumantsch Grischun will supplement but not replace the regional varieties in school. It cites the need for keeping linguistic peace among Romansh speakers, as it says that the decades-long debate over the issue has torn friends and even families apart.[84] The 2003 decision, in December 2011, has been overturned so the canton will again finance school books in the regional varieties.[85]

Rumantsch Grischun is still a project in progress.[86] At the start of 2014, it is in use as a school language in the central part of Grisons and in the bilingual classes in the region of Chur. It is taught in upper-secondary schools, in the university of teacher education in Chur and at the universities of Zürich and Fribourg, along with the Romansh idioms. It remains an official and administrative language in the Swiss Confederation and the Canton of Grisons as well as in public and private institutions for all kinds of texts intended for the whole Romansh-speaking territory.

Rumantsch Grischun is read in the news of Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha and written in the daily newspaper La Quotidiana, along with the Romansh idioms. Thanks to many new texts in a wide variety of political and social functions, the Romansh vocabulary has been decisively broadened.

The "Pledari Grond"[87] German–Rumantsch Grischun dictionary, with more than 215 000 entries, is the most comprehensive collection of Romansh words, which can also be used in the idioms with the necessary phonetic shifts. The signatories of "Pro Rumantsch"[88] stress that Romansh needs both the idioms and Rumantsch Grischun if it is to improve its chances in today's communication society.

In Switzerland, official language use is governed by the "territorial principle": Cantonal law determines which of the four national languages enjoys official status in which part of the territory. Only the federal administration is officially quadrilingual. Romansh is an official language at the federal level, one of the three official languages of the Canton of Grisons, and is a working language in various districts and numerous municipalities within the canton.

The first Swiss constitution of 1848, as well as the subsequent revision of 1872, make no mention of Romansh, which at the time was not a working language of the Canton of Grisons either. The federal government did finance a translation of the constitution into the two Romansh varieties Sursilvan and Vallader in 1872, noting however that these did not carry the force of law.[89] Romansh became a national language of Switzerland in 1938, following a referendum. However, a distinction was introduced between "national languages" and "official languages". The status of a national language was largely symbolic, whereas only official languages were to be used in official documents, a status reserved for German, French, and Italian. The recognition of Romansh as the fourth national language is best seen within the context of the "Spiritual defence" preceding World War II, which aimed to underline the special status of Switzerland as a multinational country. Additionally, this was supposed to discredit the efforts of Italian nationalists to claim Romansh as a dialect of Italian and establish a claim to parts of Grisons.[90] The Romansh language movement led by the Lia Rumantscha was mostly satisfied with the status as a national but not official language. Their aims at the time were to secure a symbolic "right of residence" for Romansh, and not actual use in official documents.[91]

This status did have disadvantages however. For instance, official name registers and property titles had to be in either German, French, or Italian. This meant that Romansh-speaking parents were often forced to register their children under German or Italian versions of their Romansh names. As late as 1984, the Canton of Grisons was ordered not to make entries into its corporate registry in Romansh.[92] The Swiss National Bank first planned to include Romansh on its bills in 1956, when a new series was introduced. Due to disputes within the Lia Rumantscha over whether the bills were to feature the Sursilvan version "Banca nazionala svizra" or the Vallader version "Banca naziunala svizzra", the bills eventually featured the Italian version twice, alongside French and German. When new bills were again introduced in 1976/77, a Romansh version was added by finding a compromise between the two largest varieties Sursilvan and Vallader, which read "Banca naziunala svizra". The numbers on the bills were printed in Surmiran, a minor intermediate dialect.

Following a referendum on March 10, 1996, Romansh was recognized as a partial official language of Switzerland alongside German, French, and Italian in article 70 of the federal constitution. According to the article, German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh are national languages of Switzerland. The official languages are declared to be German, French, and Italian, and Rhaeto-Romansh is an official language for correspondence with Romansh-speaking people.[93] This means that in principle, it is possible to address the federal administration in Romansh and receive an answer in the same language.[94] In what the Federal Culture Office itself admits is "more a placatory and symbolic use"[95] of Romansh, the federal authorities occasionally translate some official texts into Romansh. In general, though, demand for Romansh-language services is low because, according to the Federal Culture Office, Romansh speakers may either dislike the official Rumantsch Grischun idiom or prefer to use German in the first place, as most are perfectly bilingual. Without a unified standard language, the status of an official language of the Swiss Confederation would not have been conferred to Romansh. It takes time and needs to be promoted to get implemented in this new function.[96]

The Swiss Armed Forces attempted to introduce Romansh as an official language of command between 1988 and 1992. Attempts were made to form four entirely Romansh-speaking companies, but these efforts were abandoned in 1992 due to a lack of sufficient Romansh-speaking non-commissioned officers. Official use of Romansh as a language of command was discontinued in 1995 as part of a reform of the Swiss military.[97]

Grisons is the only canton of Switzerland where Romansh is recognized as an official language. The only working language of the Three Leagues was German until 1794, when the assembly of the leagues declared German, Italian, Sursilvan, and Ladin (Putèr and Vallader) to have equal official standing. No explicit mention of any official language was made in the cantonal constitutions of 1803, 1814, and 1854. The constitution of 1880 declared that "The three languages of the Canton are guaranteed as national languages,[98] without specifying anywhere which three languages are meant. The new cantonal constitution of 2004 recognizes German, Italian, and Romansh as equal national and official languages of the canton.[99] The canton used the Romansh varieties Sursilvan and Vallader up until 1997, when Rumantsch Grischun was added and use of Sursilvan and Vallader was discontinued in 2001.[100]

A Romansh-language road sign in Waltensburg/Vuorz

This means that any citizen of the canton may request service and official documents such as ballots in their language of choice, that all three languages may be used in court, and that a member of the cantonal parliament is free to use any of the three languages.[101] Since 1991, all official texts of the cantonal parliament must be translated into Romansh and offices of the cantonal government must include signage in all three languages.[100] In practice, the role of Romansh within the cantonal administration is limited and often symbolic and the working language is mainly German. This is usually justified by cantonal officials on the grounds that all Romansh speakers are perfectly bilingual and able to understand and speak German.[102] Up until the 1980s it was usually seen as a provocation when a deputy in the cantonal parliament used Romansh during a speech.[103]

Cantonal law leaves it to the districts and municipalities to specify their own language of administration and schooling. According to Article 3 of the cantonal constitution however, the municipalities are to "take into consideration the traditional linguistic composition and respect the autochthonous linguistic minorities". This means that the language area of Romansh has never officially been defined, and that any municipality is free to change its official language. In 2003, Romansh was the sole official language in 56 municipalities of Grisons, and 19 were bilingual in their administrative business.[104] In practice, even those municipalities which only recognize Romansh as an official working language, readily offer services in German as well. Additionally, since the working language of the canton is mainly German and many official publications of the canton are available only in German, it is virtually impossible for a municipal administration to operate only in Romansh.[105]

Languages of instruction in the traditionally Romansh-speaking areas of Grisons as of 2003

Romansh school

Bilingual Romansh-German school

German school, Romansh as a subject

German schooling only

Within the Romansh-speaking areas, three different types of educational models can be found: Romansh schools, bilingual schools, and German schools with Romansh as a subject.

In the Romansh schools, Romansh is the primary language of instruction during the first 3–6 years of the nine years of compulsory schooling, and German during the last 3–9 years. Due to this, this school type is often called the "so-called Romansh school". In practice, the amount of Romansh schooling varies between half and 4/5 of the compulsory school term, often depending on how many Romansh-speaking teachers are available.[106] This "so-called Romansh school" is found in 82 municipalities of Grisons as of 2001. The bilingual school is found only in Samedan, Pontresina, and Ilanz/Schnaus. In 15 municipalities, German is the sole medium of instruction as of 2001, with Romansh being taught as a subject.[107]

Outside of areas where Romansh is traditionally spoken, Romansh is not offered as a subject and as of 2001, 17 municipalities within the historical language area of Romansh do not teach Romansh as a subject.[107] On the secondary level, the language of instruction is mainly German, with Romansh as a subject in Romansh-speaking regions.

On the tertiary level, the University of Fribourg offers Bachelor- and Master programs for Romansh language and literature. The Romansh department there has been in existence since 1991. The University of Zürich also maintains a partial chair for Romansh language and literature together with the ETH Zürich since 1985.

Romansh as a household language in the census of 1860, largely corresponding to the traditional language area 90–100% 75–90% 55–75% 45- 55% 25–45% 10–25%

Whereas Romansh was spoken as far north as Lake Constance in the early Middle Ages, the language area of Romansh is today limited to parts of the Swiss canton of Grisons; the last areas outside the canton to speak Romansh, the Vinschgau in South Tyrol, became German-speaking in the 17th century.[40] Inside Grisons, the language borders largely stabilized in the 16th century and remained almost unchanged until the 19th century.[39] This language area is often called the "Traditional Romansh-speaking territory", a term introduced by the statistician Jean-Jacques Furer based on the results of the Swiss censuses. Furer defines this language area as those municipalities in which a majority declared Romansh as their mother tongue in any of the first four Swiss censuses between 1860 and 1888. In addition, he includes Fürstenau. This represented 121 municipalities at the time, corresponding to 116 present-day municipalities.[109] The villages of Samnaun, Sils im Domleschg, Masein, and Urmein, which were still Romansh-speaking in the 17th century, had lost their Romansh majority by 1860, and are not included in this definition. This historical definition of the language area has been taken up in many subsequent publications, but the Swiss Federal Statistical Office for instance defines the language area of Romansh as those municipalities, where a majority declared to habitually use Romansh in the census of 2000.

The presence of Romansh within its traditional language area varies from region to region. In 2000, 66 municipalities still had a Romansh majority, an additional 32 had at least 20% who declared Romansh as their language of best command or as a habitually spoken language,[110] while Romansh is either extinct or only spoken by a small minority in the remaining 18 municipalities within the traditional language area. In the Surselva region, it is the habitually spoken language of 78.5% and the language of best command of 66%. In the Sutselva region by contrast, Romansh is extinct or only spoken by a small number of older people, with the exception of Schams, where it is still transmitted to children and where some villages still have a Romansh majority, notably in the vicinity of the Schamserberg. In the Surmiran region, it is the main language in the Surses region, but no longer widely spoken in the Albula Valley.[111]

In the Upper Engadine valley, it is a habitually spoken language for 30.8% and the language of best command for 13%. However, most children still acquire Romansh through the school system, which has retained Romansh as the primary language of instruction, even though Swiss German is more widely spoken inside the home. In the Lower Engadine, Romansh speakers form the majority in virtually all municipalities, with 60.4% declaring Romansh as their language of best command in 2000, and 77.4% declaring it as a habitually spoken language.[112]

Outside of the traditional Romansh language area, Romansh is spoken by the so-called "Romansh diaspora", meaning people who have moved out of the Romansh-speaking valleys. A significant number are found in the capital of Grisons, Chur, as well as in Swiss cities outside of Grisons.[113][114]

The current situation of Romansh is quite well researched. The number of speakers is known through the Swiss censuses, with the most recent having taken place in 2000, in addition to surveys by the Radio e Televisiun Rumantscha. The quantitative data from these surveys was summed up by statistician Jean-Jacques Furer in 2005. In addition, linguist Regula Cathomas performed a detailed survey of everyday language use, published in 2008.

Virtually all Romansh-speakers today are bilingual in Romansh and German. Whereas monolingual Romansh were still common at the beginning of the twentieth century, they are now only found among pre-school children.[115] As Romansh linguist Ricarda Liver writes:

Whereas the cliché of the bearded, sock-knitting Alpine shepherd who speaks and understands only Romansh, may still have been a reality here and there fifty years ago, there are nowadays no adult Romansh who do not possess a bilingual competence[116]

— Ricarda Liver

The language situation today consists of a complex relationship between several diglossia, since there is a functional distribution within Romansh itself between the local dialect, the regional standard variety, and nowadays the pan-regional variety Rumantsch Grischun as well; and German is also acquired in two varieties: Swiss German and Standard German.[117] Additionally, in Val Müstair many people also speak Bavarian German as a second language. Aside from German, many Romansh also speak additional languages such as French, Italian, or English, learned at school or acquired through direct contact.

The Swiss census of 1990 and 2000 asked for the "language of best command" as well as for the languages habitually used in the family, at work, and in school. Previous censuses had only asked for the "mother tongue". In 1990, Romansh was named as the "language of best command" by 39,632 people, with a decrease to 35,095 in 2000. As a family language, Romansh is more widespread, with 55,707 having named it in 1990, and 49,134 in 2000. As a language used at work, Romansh was more widely used in 2000 with 20,327 responses than in 1990 with 17,753, as it was as a language used at school, with 6,411 naming it in 2000 as compared to 5,331 in 1990. Overall, a total of 60,561 people reported that they used Romansch of some sort on a habitual basis, representing 0.83% of the Swiss population.[118] As the language of best command, Romansh comes in 11th in Switzerland with 0.74%, with the non-national languages Serbian, Croatian, Albanian, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Turkish all having more speakers than Romansh.[6]

In the entire Canton of Grisons, where about two-thirds of all speakers live, roughly a sixth report it as the language of best command (29,679 in 1990 and 27,038 in 2000). As a family language it was used by 19.5% in 2000 (33,707), as a language used on the job by 17.3% (15,715), and as a school language by 23.3% (5,940). Overall, 21.5% (40,168) of the population of Grisons reported to be speaking Romansh habitually in 2000.[119] Within the traditional Romansh-speaking areas, where 56.1% (33,991) of all speakers lived in 2000, it is the majority language in 66 municipalities.

Romansh within the Romansh-speaking area as defined by Jean-Jacques Furer[120]

1990

%

2000

%

Total

34,274

51.32%

33,991

46.44%

Language of best command

25,894

38.78%

24,016

32.81%

Family language

30,985

47.68%

28,712

42.50%

Language used in employment

11,655

37.92%

13,734

38.14%

Language used in school

4,479

54.44%

5,645

54.91%

Vrin, the municipality with the highest percentage of people naming Romansh as their language of best command in 2000 (95.6%)

The status of Romansh differs widely within this traditional area however. Whereas in some areas Romansh is used by virtually the entire population, in others the only speakers are people who have moved there from elsewhere. Overall, Romansh dominates in most of the Surselva and the Lower Engadine as well as parts of the Surses, whereas German is the dominant daily language in most other areas, though Romansh is often still used and transmitted in a limited manner regardless.

In general, Romansh is the dominant language in most of the Surselva. In the western areas, the Cadi and the Lumnezia, it is the language of a vast majority, with around 80% naming it as their language of best command, and it often being a daily language for virtually the entire population. In the eastern areas of the Gruob around Ilanz, German is significantly more dominant in daily life, though most people still use Romansh regularly.[121] Romansh is still acquired by most children in the Cadi and Gruob even in villages where Romansh speakers are in the minority, since it is usually the language of instruction in primary education there.[111] Even in villages where Romansh dominates, newcomers rarely learn Romansh however, as Sursilvan speakers quickly accommodate by switching to German, so that there is often little opportunity to practice Romansh even when people are willing to learn it. Some pressure is often exerted by children, who will sometimes speak Romansh even with their non-Romansh-speaking parents.[122]

In the Imboden District by contrast, it is only used habitually by 22%, and is the language of best command for only 9.9%. Even within this district however, the presence of Romansh varies, with 41.3% in Trin reporting to speak it habitually.[112] In the Sutselva, the local Romansh dialects are extinct in most villages, with a few elder speakers remaining in places such as Präz, Scharans, Feldis/Veulden, and Scheid, though passive knowledge is slightly more common. Some municipalities still offer Romansh as a foreign language subject in school, though it is often under pressure of being replaced by Italian. The notably exception is Schams, where it is still regularly transmitted to children and where the language of instruction is Romansh. In the Surmeir region, it is still the dominant every day language in the Surses, but has mostly disappeared from the Albula Valley. The highest proportion of habitual speakers is found in Salouf with 86.3%, the lowest in Obervaz with 18.9%.[111] In these areas, many Romansh speakers only speak German with their spouses as an accommodation or because of a habit, though they sometimes speak Romansh to their children. In most cases, this is not because of a will to preserve the language, but because of other reasons such as Romansh having been their own childhood language or a belief that their children will later find it easier to learn additional languages.[122]

In the Upper Engadine, it is used habitually by 30.8% and the language of best command for 13%, with only S-chanf having a Romansh majority. Even though the main every-day and family language is German, Romansh is not in imminent danger of disappearing in the Upper Engadine, due to the strong emotional attachment to the language and in particular the Romansh-language school, which means that a Romansh-speaking core always exists in some form. Romansh is often a sign of being one of the locals, and used to distinguish oneself from tourists or temporary residents, so that outsiders will sometimes acquire Romansh in order to fit in.[122] In the Lower Engadine by contrast, Romansh is the majority language virtually everywhere, with over 80% reporting it as a habitually spoken language in most villages. The status of Romansh is even stronger in the Val Müstair, where 86.4% report to speak it habitually, and 74.1% as their language of best command.[112] In the Lower Engadine, outsiders are generally expected to learn Romansh if they wish to be integrated into the local community and take part in social life. In addition, there is often pressure from inside the family to learn Romansh.[122]

Romansh as a habitually spoken language within the traditional language area in 2000

Romansh as the language of best command within the traditional language area in 2000

Romansh as the language of best command in the entire canton

Percentage of people reporting to understand Romansh in 2003

Overall, Jean-Jacques Furer concludes that the shrinkage of the Romansh-speaking areas is continuing, though at different rates depending on the region. At the same time, he notes that Romansh is still very much alive, a fact that is obvious in those areas where it retains a strong presence, such as most parts of the Surselva and the Lower Engadine. It is also assured that Romansh will continue to be transmitted for several more generations, even though each succeeding generation will be more and more rooted in German as well as Romansh. As a result, if the overall linguistic situation does not change, speakers will slowly become fewer and fewer with each generation. He also concludes however, that there are still enough speakers to ensure that Romansh will survive in the long term at least in certain regions. He considers the Romansh-language school system to be the single most crucial factor in this.[123]

The vowel inventory varies somewhat between dialects, as the front rounded vowels /y/ and /ø/ and are found only in Putèr and Vallader. They have historically been unrounded in the other varieties and are found only in recent loans from German there. They are not found in the pan-regional variety Rumantsch Grischun either. The now nearly extinct Sutsilvan dialects of the Heinzenberg have /œ/ as in plànta 'plant, tree', but this is etymologically unrelated to the [ø] found in Putèr and Vallader. The exact realization of the phoneme /o/ varies from [ʊ] to [o] depending on the dialect: cudesch(help·info) / cudisch(help·info) 'book'. It is regarded as either a marginal phoneme or not a separate phoneme from /u/ by some linguists.[124]

Word stress generally falls either on the last or the penult syllable of a word. Unstressed vowels are generally reduced to a schwa, whose exact pronunciation varies between [ə] or [ɐ] as in canzun(help·info) 'song'. Vowel length is predictable:

Other dialects have different inventories; Putèr for instance lacks [au], [ɛu], and [uɛ] as well as the triphthongs but has [yə], which is missing in Sursilvan. A phenomenon known as "hardened diphthongs", in which the second vowel of a falling Diphthong is pronounced as [k], was once common in Putèr as well, but is nowadays limited to Surmiran: strousch 'barely > [ʃtrokʃ].

The vowel inventories of the five regional written varieties differ widely (in particular in regards to diphthongs), and the pronunciation often differs depending on the dialect even within them. The orthography of Sutsilvan is particularly complex, allowing for different pronunciations of the vowels depending on the regional dialect, and is not treated in this table.

The following description deals mainly with the Sursilvan dialect, which is the best-studied so far. The dialects Putèr and Vallader of the Engadine valley in particular diverge considerably from Sursilvan in many points. When possible, such differences are described.

Nouns are not inflected for case in Romansh; the grammatical category is expressed through word order instead. As in most other Romance languages, Romansh nouns belong to two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. A definite article (masc. il or igl before a vowel; fem. la) is distinguished from an indefinite article (masc. in, egn, en or ün, depending on the dialect; fem. ina, egna, ena or üna). The plural is usually formed by adding the suffix -s. In Sursilvan, masculine nouns are sometimes irregular, with the stem vowel alternating:

il mir 'the wall' – ils mirs 'the walls'.

la casa 'the house' – las casas 'the houses'.

irregular: igl iev 'the egg' – ils ovs 'the eggs'.

A particularity of Romansh is the so-called "collective plural" to refer to a mass of things as a whole:

il crap 'the stone' – ils craps 'the stones'.

collective: la crappa 'rock'.

Adjectives are declined according to gender and number. Feminine forms are always regular, but the stem vowel sometimes alternates in the masculine forms:

fem. bial (sg.) – biala (pl.) 'good'

masc. bien (sg.) – buns (pl.) 'good'.

Sursilvan also distinguishes an attributive and predicative form of adjectives in the singular. This is not found in some of the other dialects however:

Attributive: in bien carstgaun 'a good human (person)'

Predicative : il carstgaun ei buns 'the human (person) is good'

There are three singular and three plural pronouns in Romansh (Sursilvan forms shown below):

sg.

pl.

1st person

jeu

nus

2nd person

ti

vus

3rd person

el/ella/ei(igl)

els/ellas/ei

There is a T–V distinction between familiar ti and polite vus. Putèr and Vallader distinguish between familiar tü and vus and polite El/Ella and Els/Ellas. Pronouns for the polite forms in Putèr and Vallader are always capitalized to distinguish them from third person pronouns: Eau cugnuosch a Sia sour "I know your sister" and Eau cugnuosch a sia sour "I know his/her sister".

The 1st and 2nd person pronouns for a direct object have two distinct forms, with one occurring following the preposition a: dai a mi tiu codisch 'give me your book'.

A particularity of Sursilvan is that reflexive verbs are all formed with the reflexive pronoun se-, which was originally only the third person pronoun:

jeu selavel 'I am washing myself'.

ti selaves 'you are washing yourself'.

el/ella selava 'he/she is washing her/himself'.

nus selavein 'we are washing ourselves'.

els/ellas selavan 'they are washing themselves'.

The other Romansh dialects distinguish different reflexive pronouns however.

Possessive pronouns occur in a pronominal and a predicative form that differ only in the masculine form, however:

Three different demonstrative pronouns quel, tschel, and lez are distinguished: A quel fidel jeu, a tschel buc 'I trust that one, but not that other one' or Ed il bab, tgei vegn lez a dir? 'and the father, what is he going to say?'.

Verb tenses are divided into synthetic forms (present, imperfect) and analytic forms (perfect, pluperfect, future, passive) distinguished by the grammatical moods indicative, subjunctive, conditional, and imperative. These are most common forms in Sursilvan:

This feature might be a result of contact with German, or it might be an archaic feature no longer found in other Romance languages.

A sentence is negated by adding a negative particle. In Sursilvan, this is buc, placed after the verb, while in other dialects such as Putèr and Vallader, it is nu, placed before the verb:

Sursilvan: Jeu hai buc fatg quei – "I didn't do that".

Putèr: La vschinauncha nu vegn isoleda da la naiv – "The village does not get cut off by snow".

A feature found only in Putèr and Vallader (as it is in Castilian Spanish) is the preposition of a direct object, when that direct object is a person or an animal, with a, as in test vis a Peider? "did you see Peter?", eau d'he mno a spass al chaun "I took the dog out for a walk", but hest vis la baselgia? "did you see the church?".

No systematic synchronic description of Romansh vocabulary has been carried out so far.[125] Existing studies usually approach the subject from a historical perspective, taking particular interest in pre-Roman substratum, archaic words preserved only in Romansh, or in loan words from German. A project to compile together all known historic and modern Romansh vocabulary is the Dicziunari Rumantsch Grischun, first published in 1904, with the 13th edition currently in preparation.

The influence of the languages (Raetic and Celtic) spoken in Grisons before the arrival of the Romans is most obvious in placenames, which are often pre-Roman. Since very little is known about the Celtic language once spoken in Grisons, and almost nothing about Raetic, words or placenames thought to come from them are usually simply referred to as "pre-Roman". Apart from placenames, such words are found in landscape features, plant and animal names unique to the Alps, and tools and methods related to alpine transhumance.[126] Such words include:

Like all languages, Romansh has its own archaisms, that is, words derived from Latin that have fallen out of use in most other Romance languages. Examples include baselgia 'church' (Vegliotebašalka, Romanianbiserică), nuidis 'grudgingly, reluctantly' from Latin invitus, urar 'to pray' (Portugueseorar, Romaniana ura - to wish), aura 'weather' (Old Frenchore, Aromanianavrî), scheiver 'carnival',[137]cudesch 'book', the last two of which are only found in Romansh. The non-Engadinese dialects retain anceiver ~ entschaiver 'to begin', from Latin incipere, otherwise found only in Romanian începere, whereas Surmiran and Engadinese (Putèr, Vallader) and all other Romance languages retain a reflex of Latin *cuminitiāre, e.g. Engadinese (s)cumanzar, Italian cominciare, French commencer. Other examples are memia (adv.) 'too much' from Latin nimia (adj., fem.), only found in Old Occitan,[138]vess 'difficult' from Latin vix 'seldom'[139] (cf. Old Spanishabés, Romanian abia < ad vix), and Engadinese encleger 'to understand' (vs. non-Engadinese capir), also found in Romanian înțelege and Albanian(n)dëgjoj, from Latin intellegere. Some unique innovations include tedlar 'to listen' from Latin titulare and patertgar 'to think' from pertractare.[139]

Another distinguishing characteristic of Romansh vocabulary is its numerous Germanic loanwords.

Some Germanic loan words already entered the language in Late Antiquity or the Early Middle Ages, and they are often found in other Romance languages as well. Words more particular to Romansh include Surs./ Suts. tschadun, Surm. sdom/sdong, Engad. sdun 'spoon', which is also found in Ladin as sciadon and Friaulian as sedòn and is thought to go back to Ostrogothic *skeitho, and it was once probably common throughout Northern Italy.[140] Another such early loan is bletsch 'wet', which probably goes back to Old Frankish blettjan 'to squeeze', from where French blesser 'to wound' is also derived. The change in meaning probably occurred by the way of 'bruised fruit', as is still found in French blet.[140] Early Germanic loans found more commonly in the other Romance languages includes Surs./Vall. blau, Suts. blo/blova, Surm. blo/blava, Put. blov 'blue', which is derived from Germanic blao and also found for instance in French as bleu and Italian as blu.

Others were borrowed into Romansh during the Old High German period, such as glieud 'people' from OHG liut or Surs. uaul, Suts. gòld, Surm. gôt, eng. god 'forest' from OHG wald. Surs. baul, Suts. bòld, Engad. bod 'soon, early, nearly' is likely derived from Middle High Germanbald, balde 'keen, fast'[141] as are Surs. nez, Engad. nüz 'use' from Middle High German nu(t)z, or losch 'proud' likely from Middle High German lôs. Other examples include Surs. schuber 'clean' from Swiss German suuber, Surs. schumber 'drum' from Swiss German or Middle High German sumber, and Surs. schufar 'to drink greedily' from Swiss German suufe.[141]

Some words were adapted into Romansh through different dialects of German, such as the word for 'farmer', borrowed as paur from Bavarian in Vallader and Putèr, but from Alemannic as pur in the other dialects.

In addition, many German words entered Romansh beginning in the 19th century, when numerous new objects and ideas were introduced. Romansh speakers often simply adopted the German words, such as il zug 'the train' or il banhof 'the train station'. Language purists attempted to coin new Romansh words instead, which were occasionally successful in entering popular usage. Whereas il tren and la staziun managed to replace il zug and il banhof, other German words have become established in Romansh usage, such as il schalter 'the switch', il hebel 'the lever', la schlagbohrmaschina 'the hammer drill', or in schluc 'a sip'.[142] Especially noticeable are interjections such as schon, aber or halt, which have become established in everyday language.

Romansh speakers have been in close contact with speakers of German dialects such as Alemannic and Bavarian for centuries, as well as speakers of various Italian dialects and Standard German more recently. These languages have influenced Romansh, most strongly the vocabulary, whereas the German and Italian influences on morphology and syntax are much more limited. This means that despite German influence, Romansh has remained a Romance language in its core structure.[143] Romansh linguist Ricarda Liver also notes that an influence of Swiss German on intonation is obvious, in particular in the Sursilvan dialect, even though this has so far not been linguistically studied.[144] The influence of German is generally strongest in the Rhenish varieties Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, and Sursilvan, where French loanwords (frequently not borrowed directly but transmitted through German) are also more numerous. In the dialects of the Engadine, by contrast, the influence of Italian is stronger.[145]

In the Engadinese written languages, Putèr and Vallader, Italian-influenced spellings, learned words, and derivations were previously abundant, for instance in Zaccaria Pallioppi's 1895 dictionary, but came under scrutiny at the start of the 20th century and were gradually eliminated from the written language. Following reforms of the written languages of the Engadine, many of these Italian words fell out of usage (such as contadin 'farmer' instead of paur, nepotin 'nephew' rather than abiadi, ogni 'everyone' instead of inmincha, saimper 'always' instead of adüna, and abbastanza 'enough' instead of avuonda), while others persisted as synonyms of more traditional Ladin words (such as tribunal 'court' alongside drettüra, chapir alongside incleger, and testimoni 'witness' alongside perdütta).

Aside from the written language, everyday Romansh was also influenced by Italian through the large number of emigrants, especially from the Engadine, to Italy, the so-called Randulin. These emigrants often returned with their Romansh speech influenced by Italian.[146]

German loanwords entered Romansh as early as the Old High German period in the Early Middle Ages, and German has remained an important source of vocabulary since. Many of these words have been in use in Romansh for long enough that German speakers no longer recognize them as German, and for morphological derivations of them to have appeared, in particular through the suffix -egiar ~ iar, as in Surs. baghegiar, sut. biagear, Surm. biagier, Put. biager, Vall. bear 'to build', derived from Middle High German bûwen. Other examples include malegiar 'to paint' (← malen), schenghegiar 'to give (a present)' (← schenken), schazegiar 'to estimate' (← schätzen),[147] or Surs. betlegiar (sut. batlagear, Surm./Put. batlager, Vall. supetliar) 'to beg', derived from Swiss German bettle with the same meaning.[148] Nouns derived from these verbs include maletg 'painting', schenghetg 'gift', schazetg 'estimation', or bagetg 'building'.[148] The adjective flissi 'hard-working' has given rise to the noun flissiadad 'industriousness'. The word pur has given rise to derived words such as pura 'farmwife, female farmer' or puranchel 'small-time farmer', as has buob ‘boy’ from Swiss German bueb ‘boy’, with the derivations buoba ‘girl’ and buobanaglia ‘crowd of children’.

Common nouns of Italian origin include resposta/risposta 'answer', vista/vesta 'view', proposta 'proposal', surpresa/surpraisa 'surprise', and offaisa/offesa 'insult'. In Ladin, many such nouns are borrowed or derived from Italian and end in –a, whereas the same group of nouns in Sursilvan frequently ends in –iun and where borrowed either from French or formed through analogy with Latin. Examples include pretensiun ‘opinion, claim’ vs. pretaisa, defensiun ‘defense’ vs. defaisa, or confirmaziun ‘confirmation’ vs. conferma.[146]

Other Italian words used throughout Romansh include the words for 'nail', which are derived from Italian acuto 'sharp', which has yielded Sur. guota, Sut. guta, Surm. gotta, and Ladin guotta/aguotta, whereas the Romansh word for 'sharp' itself (Rhenish: git, Ladin agüz) is derived from the same Latin source ACUTUM. Words from various Italian dialects related to crafts include Ladin marangun 'carpenter' (← Venetianmarangon), as opposed to lennari in other Romansh dialects, chazzoula 'trowel' (← Lombard cazzola), or filadè 'spinning wheel' (← Lombard filadel). Other words include culinary items such as macaruns 'macaroni' (← maccheroni); tschiculatta/tschugalata 'chocolate' (← cioccolata or Lombard ciculata/cicolata), Ladin and Surmiran limun/limung 'lemon' as opposed to Sursilvan citrona (← limone), giabus/baguos 'cabbage' (← Lombard gabüs), chanella/canella 'cinnamon' (← cannella). In Sursilvan, the word ogna 'flat cake' can be found, which is derived from Italian lasagna, with the initial las- having been mistaken for the plural article, and the vowel having been adapted to Sursilvan sound patterns through analogy with words such as muntogna 'mountain'. Others are words for animals such as lodola 'lark' (← lodola) or randulina 'swallow' (← Lombard randulina), as well as Ladin scarafagi/scarvatg 'beetle' (← scarafaggio). Other Italian words include impostas 'taxes' (← imposte; as opposed to Rhenish taglia), radunanza/radunonza 'assembly' (← radunanza), Ladin ravarenda '(Protestant) priest' (← reverendo), 'bambin 'Christmas child (giftbringer)' (← Gesù Bambino), marchadant/marcadont 'merchant' (← mercatante) or butia/buteia 'shop' (← bottega).[146]

In Ladin, Italian borrowings also include words groups not usually borrowed readily. Examples include pronouns such as qualchosa 'something' (← qualcosa), listess 'the same one' (← Lombard or Venetian l'istess), adverbs such as apunta 'exactly' (← appunto), magara/magari 'fairly/quite' (← magari), prepositions like dürant/duront 'during' (← durante) and malgrà/malgrad 'despite' (← malgrado), and conjunctions such as però 'but' (← però) and fin cha 'until' (← finché). Most of these are confined to Ladin, with some exceptions such as Sursilvan magari, duront, and malgrad.[146]

Aside from outright loanwords, the German influence on Romansh often takes the form of calques, where Romanic vocabulary has taken on the meaning of German words, summed up by Italian dialectologist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli in 1880 as "materia romana e spirito tedesco" ("Roman body and German soul). The earliest examples go back to Carolingian times and show the influence of Germanic law. Such words include tschentament 'statute', a derivation of the verb tschentar (from Latin *sedentare 'to sit') as an analogy to Middle High German satzunge or Surs./sut./Surm. lètg, Put. alach, Vall. lai 'marriage', derived from Latin legem (accusative singular of lēx 'law'), with the meaning of Middle High German ê, ewe.[149] A more recent example of a loan translation is the verb tradir 'to betray', which has taken on the additional meaning of German verraten of 'to give away'[150] as in tradir in secret 'to give away a secret', originally covered by the verb revelar.

Particularly common are combinations of verbs with locative adverbs, such as vegnir cun 'to accompany' (literally 'to come with'), vegnir anavos 'to come back', far cun 'to participate' (literally 'to do with'), far giu 'to agree on' (literally 'to do down'), or grodar tras 'to fail' (literally 'to fall through'). Whereas such verbs also occur sporadically in other Romance languages as in French prendre avec 'to take along' or Italian andare via 'to go away', the large number in Romansh suggests an influence of German, where this pattern is common.[150] However, prepositional verbs are also common in the (Romance) Lombard language spoken in the bordering Swiss and Italian regions. The verbs far cun 'to participate' or grodar tras 'to fail' for example, are direct equivalents of German mitmachen (from mit 'with' and machen 'to do) and durchfallen (from durch 'through' and fallen 'to fall').

Less integrated into the Romansh verbal system are constructions following the pattern of far il ('doing the') + a German infinitive. Examples include far il löten 'to solder', far il würzen 'to season', or far il vermissen 'to miss, to feel the absence of'.

German also often serves as a model for the creation of new words. An example is Surs. tschetapuorla 'vacuum cleaner', a compound of tschitschar 'to suck' and puorla 'dust', following the model of German Staubsauger – the Italian word, aspirapolvere possibly being itself a calque on the German word. The Engadinese dialects on the other hand have adopted aspiradur from Italian aspiratore, which, however, does not mean "vacuum cleaner". The Engadinese dialects on the other hand have adopted aspiradur from Italian aspiratore. A skyscraper, which is a direct loan translation from English in many Romance languages (as in French gratte-en-ciel, Italian grattacielo), is a loan translation of German Wolkenkratzer (literally 'cloud-scraper') in Sursilvan: il sgrattaneblas (from sgrattar 'to scratch' and neblas 'clouds'). The Engadinese varieties again follow the Italian pattern of sgrattatschêl (from tschêl 'sky').[151] A more recent word is la natelnumra 'the cell phone number', which follows the word order of Swiss German Natelnummer, and is found alongside la numra da natel.

Examples of idiomatic expressions include Surs. dar in canaster, Engad. dar ün dschierl, a direct translation of German 'einen Korb geben', literally meaning 'to hand a basket', but used in the sense of 'turning down a marriage proposal' or esser ligiongia ad enzatgi, a loan translation of the German expression jemandem Wurst sein, literally meaning 'to be sausage to someone' but meaning 'not cared about, to be unimportant'.[151]

Apart from vocabulary, the influence of German is noticeable in grammatical constructions, which are sometimes closer to German than to other Romance languages.

For instance, Romansh is the only Romance language in which indirect speech is formed using the subjunctive mood, as in Sursilvan El di ch'el seigi malsauns, Putèr El disch ch'el saja amalo, 'He says that he is sick', as compared to Italian Dice che è malato or French Il dit qu'il est malade. Ricarda Liver attributes this to the influence of German.[144] Limited to Sursilvan is the insertion of entire phrases between auxiliary verbs and participles as in Cun Mariano Tschuor ha Augustin Beeli discurriu 'Mariano Tschuor has spoken with Augustin Beeli' as compared to Engadinese Cun Rudolf Gasser ha discurrü Gion Peider Mischol 'Rudolf Gasser has spoken with Gion Peider Mischol'.[152]

In contemporary spoken language, adjective forms are often not distinguished from adverbs, as in Sursilvan Jeu mon direct 'I am going directly', rather than Jeu mon directamein. This usage is rare in most other Romance languages with a few sporadic exceptions as in French parler haut or Italian vosà fort 'speak aloud', and the common usage in colloquial Romansh is likely an influence from German.[153]

Especially noticeable and often criticized by language purists are particles such as aber, schon, halt, grad, eba, or zuar, which have become an integral part of everyday Romansh speech, especially in Sursilvan.[154]

Negation was originally formed by a double negative in all Romansh dialects. Today, this usage is limited to Surmiran as in ia na sa betg 'I do not know' (it has also been included in panregional Rumantsch Grischun). While the first particle was lost in Sursilvan, where negation is now formed only with buc as in jeu sai buc, the Ladin varieties lost the second particle brich(a), apparently under the influence of Italian, as in Putér eau nu se.[155]

The influence of Romansh on the local vernacular German has not been studied as thoroughly as vice versa. Apart from place names throughout the former speech area of Romansh, only a handful of Romansh words have become part of wider German usage. Such words include "Gletscher" 'glacier' or "Murmeltier" 'marmot' (derived from Romansh murmunt), as well as culinary items such as Maluns or Capuns. The Romansh influence is much stronger in the German dialects of Grisons. It is sometimes controversially suspected that the pronunciation /k/ or /h/ in words such as Khind and bahe, as opposed to /x/ in other Swiss German dialects (Chind and bache), is an influence of Romansh.[156]

In morphosyntax, the use of the auxiliary verb kho 'to come' as opposed to wird 'will' in phrases such as leg di warm a, sunscht khunscht krank ('put on warm clothes, otherwise you will get sick') in Grisons-German is sometimes attributed to Romansh, as well as the lack of a distinction between the accusative and dative case in some Grisons-German dialects and the word order in phrases such as i tet froge jemand wu waiss ('I would ask someone who knows'). In addition, some words, neuter in most dialects of German, are masculine in Grisons-German. Examples include der Brot 'the bread' or der Gäld 'the money'.[156] Common words of Romansh origin in Grisons-German include Schaffa (derived from Romansh scaffa 'cupboard'), Spus/Spüslig 'bridegroom' and Spus 'bride', Banitsch 'cart used for moving dung', and Pon 'container made of wood'. In areas where Romansh either is still spoken or has disappeared recently, Romansh words are even more common in the local dialects of German.

The influence of German has been seen in different ways by linguists and language activists. The Italian dialectologist Ascoli for instance described Romansh as "a body that has lost its soul and taken on an entirely foreign one in its place" in the 1880s.[157] This opinion was shared by many, who saw the influence of German as a threat to and corruption of Romansh, often referring to it as a disease infecting Romansh.[158] This view was prevalent until after World War II, with many contemporary linguists and activists by contrast seeing these loan elements as completely natural and as an integral part of Romansh,[159] which should be seen as an enrichment of the language.[160] This position is currently held among others by the language activists Bernard Cathomas, Iso Camartin, or Alexi Decurtins, who argue for a relaxed attitude towards loan elements, which they point out are often among the most down-to-earth elements of the language, and that the dual nature of Romansh can also be seen as an advantage in being open to cultural elements from both sides.[154] This position is also shared by several contemporary authors in particular from the Surselva, such as Arno Camenisch, who makes heavy use of Germanisms in his works.

Romansh had a rich oral tradition before the appearance of Romansh writing, but apart from songs such as the Canzun da Sontga Margriata, virtually none of it survives. Prior to the 16th century, Romansh writings are known from only a few fragments.

The oldest known written records of Romansh dating from the period before 1500 are:

the Würzburg manuscript (10th century);

the Einsiedeln Homily dates from the early 12th century, discovered in 1907, and consists of a few lines, in an early form of the Romonsch dialect, of interlinear translation (with the original Latin text) of a sermon attributed to St Augustine;

the Müstair linguistic monument dated 1389 and consisting of a fragment of a document about grazing rights on common land in the Val Müstair, it is a court testimony in Romansh attested in an otherwise Latin document:

The first substantial surviving work in Romansh is the Chianzun dalla guerra dagl Chiaste da Müs written in the Putèr dialect in 1527 by Gian Travers. It is an epic poem describing the First Musso war which Travers himself had taken part in.[34]

Subsequent works usually have religious themes, including Bible translations, manuals for religious instructions, and biblical plays. In 1560, the first Romansh translation of the New Testament: L'g Nuof Sainc Testamaint da nos Signer Jesu Christ by Giachem Bifrun, was published. Two years later, in 1562, another writer from the Engadine, Durich Chiampel, published the Cudesch da Psalms, a collection of Romansh church songs in the Vallader dialect. In the Sursilvan dialect, the first surviving works are also religious works such as catechism by Daniel Bonifaci, and in 1611 Ilg Vêr Sulaz da pievel giuvan ("The true joys of young people"), a series of religious instructions for Protestant youths was published by Steffan Gabriel. Four years later in 1615, a Catholic catechism Curt Mussament was published in response, written by Gion Antoni Calvenzano. The first translation of the New Testament into Sursilvan was published in 1648 by the son of Steffan Gabriel, Luci Gabriel. The first complete translation of the Bible, the Bibla da Cuera was published between 1717 and 1719.

In music, choirs have a long tradition in the Romansh-speaking areas. Apart from traditional music and song, Romansh is also used in contemporary pop or hip-hop music, some of which has become known outside the Romansh-speaking regions, for instance, in the Eurovision Song Contest 1989, Switzerland was represented by a Romansh song, Viver senza tei. Since 2004, the hip-hop group Liricas Analas has become known even outside of Grisons through their Romansh songs. Other contemporary groups include the rock-band Passiunai with its lead singer Pascal Gamboni, or the rock/pop band The Capoonz. Composer Gion Antoni Derungs has written three operas with Romansh librettos: Il cerchel magic (1986), Il semiader (1998) and Tredeschin (2000).

Front page of the Engadiner Post/Posta Ladina in February 2010

Romansh is used to varying extents in newspapers, the radio, and television. Radio and television broadcasts in Romansh are produced by the Radiotelevisiun Svizra Rumantscha, which is part of the Swiss public broadcasting company SRG SSR. The radio Radio Rumantsch broadcasts a 24-hour program including informational and music broadcasts. The broadcasters generally speak their own regional dialect on the air, which is considered a key factor in familiarizing Romansh speakers with the dialects outside their home region.[161] News broadcasts are generally in the pan-regional variety Rumantsch Grischun. The two local radio stations Radio Grischa and Radio Engiadina occasionally broadcast in Romansh, but primarily use German. The Televisiun Rumantscha airs regular broadcasts on SF 1, which are subtitled in German. Programs include the informational broadcast Telesguard, which is broadcast daily from Monday to Friday. The children's show Minisguard and the informational broadcast Cuntrasts are aired on weekends. Additionally, the shows Controvers, Pled sin via, and others are broadcast during irregular intervals.[162]

The Romansh newspapers used to be heavily fragmented by regions and dialects. The more long-lived newspapers included the Gasetta Romontscha in the Surselva, the Fögl Ladin in the Engadine, Casa Paterna/La Punt in the Sutselva, and La Pagina da Surmeir in the Surmeir. Due to financial difficulties, most of these merged into a pan-regional daily newspaper called La Quotidiana in 1997. This newspaper includes articles in all five dialects and in Rumantsch Grischun. Apart from La Quotidiana, La Pagina da Surmeir continues to be published to a regional audience, and the Engadiner Post includes two pages in Romansh. A Romansh news agency, the Agentura da Novitads Rumantscha, has been in existence since 1997.

Several Romansh-language magazines are also published regularly, including the youth magazine Punts and the yearly publications Calender Romontsch and Chalender Ladin.

The fable The Fox and the Crow by Aesop with a French version by Jean de La Fontaine; translated into the Dachsprache Rumantsch Grischun and all six dialects of Romansh: Sursilvan, Sutsilvan, Surmiran, Puter, and the similar-looking but noticeably different-sounding dialects Vallader and Jauer,[163] as well as a translation into English.

The fox was hungry yet again.
There, he saw a raven upon a fir holding a piece of cheese in its beak. This I would like, he thought, and shouted at the raven: "You are so beautiful! If your singing is as beautiful as your looks, then you are the most beautiful of all birds.".

1.
Romance languages
–
Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. The five most widely spoken Romance languages by number of speakers are Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Because of the difficulty of imposing boundaries on a continuum, various counts of the modern Romance languages are given, for example, Dalby lists 23 based on mutual intelligibility. Between 350 BC and 150 AD, the expansion of the Empire, together with its administrative and educational policies, Latin also exerted a strong influence in southeastern Britain, the Roman province of Africa, western Germany and the Balkans north of the Jireček Line. Despite other influences, the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of all Romance languages consist mainly of evolved forms of Vulgar Latin, however, some notable differences occur between todays Romance languages and their Roman ancestor. With only one or two exceptions, Romance languages have lost the system of Latin and, as a result, have SVO sentence structure. From this adverb the noun romance originated, which applied initially to anything written romanice, the word romance with the modern sense of romance novel or love affair has the same origin. In the medieval literature of Western Europe, serious writing was usually in Latin, while popular tales, often focusing on love, were composed in the vernacular, for example, the Portuguese word fresta is descended from Latin fenestra window, but now means skylight and slit. Cognates may exist but have become rare, such as finiestra in Spanish, the Spanish and Portuguese terms defenestrar meaning to throw through a window and fenestrado meaning replete with windows also have the same root, but are later borrowings from Latin. Galician has both fiestra and the frequently used ventá and xanela. As an alternative to lei, Italian has the pronoun ella, a cognate of the words for she. Sardinian balcone comes from Old Italian and is similar to other Romance languages such as French balcon, Portuguese balcão, Romanian balcon, Spanish balcón, Catalan balcó and Corsican balconi. Documentary evidence is limited about Vulgar Latin for the purposes of research. Many of its speakers were soldiers, slaves, displaced peoples, other scholars argue that the distinctions are more rightly viewed as indicative of sociolinguistic and register differences normally found within any language. Both were mutually intelligible as one and the language, which was true until the second half of the 7th century. Central Europe and the Balkans were occupied by the Germanic and Slavic tribes, as well as by the Huns, over the course of the fourth to eighth centuries, Vulgar Latin, by this time highly dialectalized, broke up into discrete languages that were no longer mutually intelligible

2.
Andeer
–
Andeer is a municipality in the Viamala Region in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. In 2009 Clugin and Pignia merged into Andeer, Roman coins discovered near Andeer indicate that there was a Roman presence in the area during the time of the Roman province of Raetia. The name of the settlement was presumably Lapidaria, and it would have already been an important stop on the road from Italy, Andeer is first mentioned in 1208 as Anders. Around 1820, roads were built over the Splügen Pass und the San Bernardino Pass, when the railroad tunnels through the Alps were completed near the end of the 19th century, they greatly reduced traffic through the region. Since the opening of the San Bernardino road tunnel in 1967, Andeer has an area, as of 2006, of 30.5 km2. Of this area,28. 9% is used for agricultural purposes, of the rest of the land, 3% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. Before 2017, the municipality was located in the Schams sub-district, of the Hinterrhein district and it consists of the linear village of Andeer and the ruins of Bärenburg castle. Andeer lies in the Schams valley on the Hinterrhein, Andeer has a population of 958. As of 2007,10. 6% of the population was made up of foreign nationals, over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 3. 9%. As of 2000, the distribution of the population was 47. 8% male and 52. 2% female. The age distribution, as of 2000, in Andeer is,87 people or 13. 0% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old,42 people or 6. 3% are 10 to 14, and 28 people or 4. 2% are 15 to 19. Of the adult population,62 people or 9. 3% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 103 people or 15. 4% are 30 to 39,85 people or 12. 7% are 40 to 49, in the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 44% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SPS, the FDP and the CVP, in Andeer about 73. 9% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education. Andeer has an unemployment rate of 1. 03%, as of 2005, there were 19 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 7 businesses involved in this sector. 89 people are employed in the sector and there are 13 businesses in this sector. 269 people are employed in the sector, with 41 businesses in this sector. The historical population is given in the table, Andeer has an average of 102.1 days of rain per year

3.
Sagogn, Switzerland
–
Sagogn is a municipality in the Surselva Region in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. Sagogn is first mentioned in 765 as Secanio, Sagogn has an area, as of 2006, of 7 km2. Of this area,23. 2% is used for agricultural purposes, of the rest of the land,4. 7% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. Before 2017, the municipality was located in the Ilanz sub-district of the Surselva district and it is on the northern slope above the Vorderrhein on the bank of the Gruob. It consists of the sections of Innerdorf and Ausserdorf. Until 1943 Sagogn was known by its German name as Sagens, Sagogn has a population of 689. As of 2008,6. 6% of the population was made up of foreign nationals, over the last 10 years the population has decreased at a rate of -5. 4%. Most of the population speaks Romansh, with German being second most common, the official language is the Sursilvan dialect of Romansh. As of 2000, the distribution of the population was 55. 0% male and 45. 0% female. The age distribution, as of 2000, in Sagogn is,60 children or 10. 1% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old and 93 teenagers or 15. 6% are between 10 and 19. Of the adult population,63 people or 10. 6% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 92 people or 15. 4% are between 30 and 39,95 people or 15. 9% are between 40 and 49, and 79 people or 13. 2% are between 50 and 59. In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 32. 6% of the vote, the next three most popular parties were the CVP, the SP and the FDP. In Sagogn about 74. 9% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education, Sagogn has an unemployment rate of 0. 98%. As of 2005, there were 13 people employed in the economic sector. 22 people are employed in the sector and there are 8 businesses in this sector. 33 people are employed in the sector, with 11 businesses in this sector. The Church of S. Maria was built in 1634, while the tower is from an earlier structure and was built in 1449

4.
Swiss National Park
–
The Swiss National Park is located in the Western Rhaetian Alps, in eastern Switzerland. It is within the canton of Graubünden, between Zernez, S-chanf, Scuol, and the Fuorn Pass in the Engadin valley on the border with Italy and it is part of the worldwide UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It was founded on 1 August 1914, the holiday of Switzerland. It was one of the earliest national parks in Europe, as of 2009, it is the only National Park in Switzerland, though there are plans to create more. It has an area of 174.2 km² and is the largest protected area of the country, in the park, one is not allowed to leave marked paths, make fire or sleep outside the Chamanna Cluozza, the mountain hut located in the park. It is also forbidden to disturb the animals or the plants, dogs are not allowed, not even on a leash. Due to these rules, the Swiss National Park is the only park in the Alps who has been categorized by the IUCN as a strict nature reserve. A visitor centre is located in Zernez, the road through the park leads over the Fuorn Pass to South Tyrol in Italy. In addition to the Swiss National Park, Switzerland also has sixteen regional nature parks, stephanie Summermatter, Protection of nature in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland

5.
Sgraffito
–
The Italian past participle sgraffiato is also used, especially of pottery. Sgraffito and sgraffiti come from the Italian word graffiare, ultimately from the Greek γράφειν, related terms include graffito and graffiti. Sgraffito on walls has been used in Europe since classical times, it was popularized in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, in combination with ornamental decoration these techniques formed an alternative to the prevailing painting of walls. Of late there has been a growing interest in this old technique. The technical procedure is simple, and the procedures are similar to the painting of frescoes. Most of their work has now weathered away, during the 16th century, the technique was brought to Germany by the master builders of the Renaissance and taken up with enthusiasm. As a simple art, old examples of sgraffito can be found in the wide surroundings of Wetterau. In Germany, the technique is most predominant in Bavaria, the use of sgraffito was common in the creation of housing façades for the purposes of advertising. The technique was used in Thuringia, the Engadin, Austria and Transylvania. In Catalonia, sgraffito was implemented in the early 20th century by the Noucentista neo-classical architects, another use of sgraffito is seen in its simplified painting technique. One coat of paint is left to dry on a canvas or sheet of paper, another coat of a different color is painted on top of the first layer. The artist then uses a knife or oil stick to scratch out a design. This can also be achieved by using oil pastels for the first layer, sometimes a first coat of paint is not needed, and the wet coat scraped back reveals the canvas. This cannot be achieved by using the oil pastel method and this technique is often used in art classes to teach the sgraffito technique to novice art students. The English artist Heywood Sumner has been identified as this eras pioneer of the technique, for example his work at the 1892 St Marys Church, Sunbury, Surrey. Sumners work is sgraffito per se, scratched plaster, but the term has come to encompass a variety of techniques for producing exterior graphic decoration, St. Benets Chaplaincy at Queen Mary, University of London

6.
Guarda, Switzerland
–
Guarda is a former municipality in Inn District in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. On 1 January 2015 the former municipalities of Ardez, Guarda, Tarasp, Ftan, Guarda was awarded the Wakker Prize for the preservation of its architectural heritage in 1975. Guarda is first mentioned in 1160 as Warda, Guarda had an area, as of 2006, of 31.5 km2. Of this area,35. 5% is used for agricultural purposes, of the rest of the land,0. 7% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. The former municipality is located in the Sur Tasna sub-district of the Inn district on a terrace above the bank of the Inn river. It consists of the village of Guarda above the valley. Guarda had a population of 155, as of 2008,13. 5% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years the population has decreased at a rate of -13. 4%, as of 2000, the gender distribution of the population was 49. 7% male and 50. 3% female. The age distribution, as of 2000, in Guarda is,8 children or 5. 6% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old,9 teenagers or 6. 3% are 10 to 14, and 7 teenagers or 4. 9% are 15 to 19. Of the adult population,16 people or 11. 1% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 13 people or 9. 0% are 30 to 39,28 people or 19. 4% are 40 to 49, and 17 people or 11. 8% are 50 to 59. The senior population distribution is 13 people or 9. 0% of the population are between 60 and 69 years old,21 people or 14. 6% are 70 to 79, there are 12 people or 8. 3% who are 80 to 89. In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 46. 3% of the vote, the next three most popular parties were the SPS, the CVP and the FDP. The entire Swiss population is well educated. In Guarda about 77. 3% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education, Guarda has an unemployment rate of 1. 83%. As of 2005, there were 27 people employed in the economic sector. 19 people are employed in the sector and there are 8 businesses in this sector. 56 people are employed in the sector, with 14 businesses in this sector

7.
Switzerland
–
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’

8.
Language family
–
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others

9.
Indo-European languages
–
The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD

10.
Italic languages
–
The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants as well as a number of languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan. With over 800 million native speakers, the Italic languages constitute the second most widely spoken branch of the Indo-European family, in the past, various definitions of Italic have prevailed. This article uses the classification presented by the Linguist List, Italic includes the Latin subgroup as well as the ancient Italic languages, venetic, as revealed by its inscriptions, shared some similarities with the Italic languages and is sometimes classified as Italic. However, since it shares similarities with other Western Indo-European branches. In the extreme view, Italic did not exist, but the different groups descended directly from Indo-European and this view stems in part from the difficulty in identifying a common Italic homeland in prehistory. Moreover, there are similarities between groups, although how these similarities are to be interpreted is one of the major debatable issues in the historical linguistics of Indo-European. The linguist Calvert Watkins went so far as to suggest, among ten major groups and these he considered dialectical divisions within Proto-Indo-European which go back to a period long before the speakers arrived in their historical areas of attestation. The main debate concerning the origin of the Italic languages is the same as that which preoccupied Greek studies for the last half of the 20th century, the Indo-Europeanists for Greek had hypothesized that Greek originated outside Greece and was brought in by invaders. The issue was settled in favour of the origin of Greek being that of a language which had developed from all of these elements and then also taken its recognisable form all within Greece. A proto-Italic homeland outside Italy is just as elusive as the home of the hypothetical Greek-speaking invaders, no early form of Italic is available to match Mycenaean Greek. The Italic languages are first attested in writing from Umbrian and Faliscan inscriptions dating to the 7th century BC, the alphabets used are based on the Old Italic alphabet, which is itself based on the Greek alphabet. The Italic alphabets themselves show minor influence from the Etruscan and somewhat more from the Ancient Greek alphabet, the intermediate phases between Italic and Indo-European are still in deficit, with no guarantee that they ever will be found. The question of whether Italic originated outside Italy or developed by assimilation of Indo-European and other elements within Italy, approximately on or within its current range there, remains. Silvestri says. Common Italic. is certainly not to be seen as a language that can largely be reconstructed. Bakkum defines Proto-Italic as a stage without an independent development of its own, but extending over late PIE. Meisers dates of 4000 BC to 1800 BC he describes as as good a guess as anyones, the Roman conquests eventually spread it throughout the peninsula and beyond in the Roman Empire. It is unknown whether the language spoken by the Sicels in Sicily was Italic or not, from Vulgar Latin the Romance languages emerged

11.
Western Romance languages
–
Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian-Romance branches as well as northern Italian, there is also much higher morphological similarity between Spanish and Italian dialects than between Italian and French. Some classifications include Italo-Dalmatian, the clade is generally called Italo-Western Romance. Other classifications place Italo-Dalmatian with Eastern Romance, sardinian does not fit into either Western or Eastern Romance, and may have split off before either. Today the four most-widely spoken standardized Western Romance languages are Spanish, Portuguese, French, many of these languages have large numbers of non-native speakers, this is especially the case for French, in widespread use throughout West Africa as a lingua franca. Gallo-Romance includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages and these include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Norman. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Sometimes included in the Oïl languages, Gallo-Romance can include, The Rhaeto-Romance languages. They include Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area, Rhaeto-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and East Iberia, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian-Romance, or as an independent branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal dialect. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, can be classified as East Iberian. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic languages can be classified as Gallo-Romance or as Northern Italian dialects. The Oïl languages, Arpitan and Rhaeto-Romance languages are sometimes called Gallo-Rhaetian, Iberian Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula include, The West Iberian languages, The Castilian languages, includes Spanish and Judaeo-Spanish. The Galician-Portuguese languages, includes Portuguese, Galician, Fala and Uruguayan Portuñol, the Astur-Leonese languages, they are, from east to west, Cantabrian, central-eastern Asturian and Leonese proper. Going from north to south, they are Leonese proper, Mirandese, Extremaduran, the Pyrenean–Mozarabic languages, includes Aragonese, and the extinct Mozarabic. Can be classified as West Iberian, the East Iberian language, or Catalan language, usually classified as part of Occitano-Romance, see Gallo-Romance above

12.
Gallo-Romance languages
–
The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes sensu stricto the Oïl languages and the Franco-Provençal language. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance, Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance group includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, Lorrain and Normand, Poitevin and these are the most phonologically innovative Romance varieties. The Arpitan language, also known as Franco-Provençal, of southeastern France, western Switzerland and it shares features of both French and the Provençal dialect of Occitan. Other language families which are included in the Gallo-Romance, The Rhaeto-Romance languages, including Romansh of Switzerland, Ladin of the Dolomites area. Rhaeto-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages, Rhaeto-Romance is a diverse group, with the Italian varieties influenced by Venetan and Italian and Romansh by Franco-Provençal. The Occitano-Romance languages of Southern France and neighbouring areas, includes Occitan and Catalan, Occitano-Romance can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Iberian Romance, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. The Occitan language, or langue doc, has such as Provençal. The Catalan language has standard forms of Catalan and Valencian, in general however, modern Catalan, especially grammatically, remains closer to modern Occitan than to either Spanish or Portuguese. They include Piedmontese, Ligurian, Western and Eastern Lombard, Emilian, Romagnol, Gallo-Italic of Sicily, Gallo-Italic can be classified as Gallo-Romance, Italo-Dalmatian, or as a branch of the Western Romance languages. Ligurian retains the final -o, being the exception in Gallo-Romance, how far the Gallo-Romance languages spread varies a great deal depending on which languages are included in the group. Today, a single Gallo-Romance language dominates much of this region and has also spread overseas. At its broadest, the area also encompasses southern France, Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic islands in eastern Spain, the Gallo-Romance languages are generally considered the most innovative among the Romance languages. Characteristic Gallo-Romance features generally developed earliest and appear in their most extreme manifestation in the langue doïl, gradually spreading out from there along riverways, Gallo-Romance languages are usually characterised by the loss of all unstressed final vowels other than /-a/. However, when the loss of a final vowel would result in an impossible final cluster, generally, the same changes also occurred in final syllables closed by a consonant. Elsewhere, final vowel loss occurred later or unprotected /t/ was lost earlier, for example, French sain, saint, sein, ceint, seing meaning healthy, holy, breast, girds, signature are all pronounced /sɛ̃/. In other ways, however, the Gallo-Romance languages are conservative, in the opposite of the normal pattern, the languages closest to the oïl epicentre preserve the case system the best, and languages at the periphery lost it early. The Occitan group is known for an innovatory /ɡ/ ending on many subjunctive and preterite verbs and a development of

13.
Rhaeto-Romance languages
–
Rhaeto-Romance, or Rhaetian, is a traditional subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in north and north-eastern Italy and in Switzerland. The name Rhaeto-Romance refers to the former Roman province of Rhaetia, the linguistic basis of the subfamily is discussed in the so-called Questione Ladina. The area where Rhaeto-Romance languages were spoken during the Middle Ages stretched from Switzerland to the Julian Alps, the Rhaeto-Romance languages can be distinguished into the following varieties, Romansh, Switzerland. Romansh has status in Switzerland as a language with three other national languages, however, its usage is rather limited to the canton of Graubünden. Ladin, Dolomitic Ladin in Italy Friulian, Friuli region, Italy A phylogenetic classification using basic lexicon identifies a primary split between Romansh in Switzerland and Ladin in Italy, one secondary split distinguishes Engadinic from the other Romansh varieties in Switzerland. In this study, the divergence of the Rhaeto-Romance languages from their reconstructed lexical ancestor is about 7% on average and this would correspond to a time depth of about 500 years if the glottochronological replacement rate of 14% per millennium for Romance were trustworthy. However, the earliest available Romance text from the Alpine area is somewhat older, Rhaetian language, an unrelated language spoken in ancient times around the area where Rhaeto-Romance is now spoken

14.
Rumantsch Grischun
–
Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language along with German, French and Italian since 1996. It is sometimes grouped with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, Romansh has also been heavily influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retreated to its current area over the centuries, being replaced by Alemannic, the earliest writing identified as Romansh dates from the 10th or 11th century, although major works do not appear until the 16th century when several regional written varieties began to develop. The 19th century saw a shrinkage of the language area but also a literary revival. In the 2000 Swiss census,35,095 people indicated Romansh as the language of best command, in 2010, Switzerland switched to a yearly system which uses a combination of municipal citizen records and a limited number of surveys. Based on this system, the number of people aged 15. The language area and number of speakers of Romansh have been continually shrinking, Romansh is divided into five different regional dialects, each with its own standardized written language. In addition, a variety called Rumantsch Grischun was introduced in 1982. Romansh is a Romance language descending from Vulgar Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out because of its peripheral location, another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long language contact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser extent the syntax of Romansh. Romansh belongs to the Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages, which includes such as French, Occitan. The main feature placing Romansh within the Gallo-Romance languages is the fronting of Latin /u/ to or, as seen in Latin muru wall, which is mür or mir in Romansh. This sound change is partially absent in some varieties of Romansh, however, especially in Sursilvan, retention of word-final -s as in buns chavals good horses as opposed to Italian buoni cavalli. Retention of L following /p b k ɡ f/, Latin clavem key > clav as opposed to Italian chiave, another defining feature of the Romansh language is the use of unstressed vowels. Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should compose a separate Rhaeto-Romance subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was then fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. This position goes back to the Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who first made the claim in 1873, linguists who take this position often point out that the similarities between the languages are comparatively few. This position was first introduced by the Italian dialectologist Carlo Battisti and this linguistic dispute became politically relevant for the Italian irredentist movement. Italian nationalists interpreted Battistis hypothesis as implying that Romansh, Friulan and Ladin were not separate languages and they used this as an argument to claim the territories where these languages were spoken for Italy

15.
Sursilvan
–
Sursilvan is a group of dialects of the Romansh language spoken in the Swiss district of Surselva. It is the most widely spoken variety of Romansh with 17,897 people within the Surselva District naming Romansh as a spoken language in the Swiss census of 2000. The most closely related variety is Sutsilvan, which is spoken in the area located to the east of the district. The name of the dialect and the Surselva District is derived from sur above and selva forest, the word selva itself has fallen out of use in modern Sursilvan, with the most common word for forest being uaul, an Old High German loanword. Selva is only used for in a few more recent terms such as forestry, selvicultur forest officer. Sursilvan is used across most of the Surselva District, with the exception of the Walser villages of Obersaxen, Vals, St. Martin, outside of the Surselva District, Flims is also part of the Sursilvan dialect area. In addition, Sursilvan was previously used as the written Romansh language of parts of the Sutsilvan dialect area, when a separate Sutsilvan written language was introduced in 1944, the villages of Bonaduz, Rhäzüns, Domat/Ems and Trin retained Sursilvan as their written language. In addition, Sursilvan was previously used in the Surmiran dialect area as the language of church, most municipalities in which Sursilvan is the traditional language still have a Romansh-speaking majority today. The exceptions are Flims, Laax, Schnaus, Ilanz, Castrisch, Surcuolm, and Duvin. In all of these, except for Flims, however, a majority of reported in the 2000 Swiss census to use Romansh daily. In about half of the Sursilvan villages, Romansh is the language of best command of over 70% or 80%, the highest percentage is found in Vrin with over 95%. As a daily language, it is used in all municipalities by at least 70%, in about half by more than 80%. Overall across the Sursilvan dialect area, in the census of 2000,70. 1% named Romansh as a habitually used language, Sursilvan spelling mostly follows a phonemic system. Gereon Janzing, Rätoromanisch Wort für Wort, Reise Know-How Verlag Rump,2006, alexi Decurtins, Niev vocabulari romontsch sursilvan - tudestg / Neues rätoromanisches Wörterbuch surselvisch-deutsch, Chur 2001. Vieli/Decurtins, Vocabulari tudestg - romontsch sursilvan, Lia Rumantscha,1994, arnold Spescha, Grammatica sursilvana, Lehrmittelverlag Graubünden, Chur 1989. Alexi Decurtins, Niev vocabulari romontsch sursilvan - tudestg / Neues rätoromanisches Wörterbuch surselvisch-deutsch, vieli/Decurtins, Vocabulari tudestg - romontsch sursilvan, Lia Rumantscha,1994. Arnold Spescha, Grammatica sursilvana, Lehrmittelverlag Graubünden, Chur 1989, Sursilvan literature is published among others by the Lia Rumantscha in Chur

16.
Vallader
–
Vallader is a variety of the Romansh language spoken in the Lower Engadine valley of southeast Switzerland, between Martina and Zernez. It is also used as a language in the nearby community of Val Müstair. In 2008, schools in the Val Müstair switched from Vallader to Rumantsch Grischun as their written language, the name of the dialect is derived from val valley. It is the second most commonly spoken variety of Romansh, with 6,448 people in the Lower Engadine valley naming Romansh as a spoken language in the census of 2000. Romansh can be separated into two groups, Rhine dialects and Engadine dialects. A variety of Vallader was also used in Samnaun until the late 19th century, the last speaker of the Romansh dialect of Samnaun, Augustin Heiß, died in 1935. For a long period of time, the oldest written form Puter held much prestige with its name and it was used as the language of the aristocratic Engadine tourist region near St. Moritz. It was used most widely in the 19th century, Vallader has since become more important. The dialect Jauer, is actually a variety of Vallader spken in Val Müstair and it is almost only spoken there, and is virtually never written. Puter and Vallader are sometimes referred to as one specific variety known as Ladin and they are also considered Engadine dialects, since they are spoken in the area of the Engadines. Vallader shares many traits with the Puter dialect spoken in the Upper Engadine, on the lexical level, the two varieties are similar enough to have a common dictionary. Puter and Vallader share the front vowels and, which are not found in other Romansh varieties. These sounds make written Ladin easily distinguishable through the numerous occurrences of the letters ⟨ü⟩, in Vallader, the clitics are almost always well preserved, and there are no clustered forms that are known. On the other hand, Puter still preserves the system completely. Compared to Puter, Vallader spelling reflects the more closely. Another difference is one class of verbs end in -ar in Vallader. This is an important detail derived most likely from Italian or Spanish and this is also possible in Puter. Vallader, being one of the five dialects, is used in the Val Müstair

17.
Sutsilvan
–
Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language along with German, French and Italian since 1996. It is sometimes grouped with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, Romansh has also been heavily influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retreated to its current area over the centuries, being replaced by Alemannic, the earliest writing identified as Romansh dates from the 10th or 11th century, although major works do not appear until the 16th century when several regional written varieties began to develop. The 19th century saw a shrinkage of the language area but also a literary revival. In the 2000 Swiss census,35,095 people indicated Romansh as the language of best command, in 2010, Switzerland switched to a yearly system which uses a combination of municipal citizen records and a limited number of surveys. Based on this system, the number of people aged 15. The language area and number of speakers of Romansh have been continually shrinking, Romansh is divided into five different regional dialects, each with its own standardized written language. In addition, a variety called Rumantsch Grischun was introduced in 1982. Romansh is a Romance language descending from Vulgar Latin, the language of the Roman Empire. Within the Romance languages, Romansh stands out because of its peripheral location, another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long language contact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser extent the syntax of Romansh. Romansh belongs to the Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages, which includes such as French, Occitan. The main feature placing Romansh within the Gallo-Romance languages is the fronting of Latin /u/ to or, as seen in Latin muru wall, which is mür or mir in Romansh. This sound change is partially absent in some varieties of Romansh, however, especially in Sursilvan, retention of word-final -s as in buns chavals good horses as opposed to Italian buoni cavalli. Retention of L following /p b k ɡ f/, Latin clavem key > clav as opposed to Italian chiave, another defining feature of the Romansh language is the use of unstressed vowels. Whether or not Romansh, Friulan and Ladin should compose a separate Rhaeto-Romance subgroup within Gallo-Romance is an unresolved issue, some linguists posit that these languages are descended from a common language, which was then fractured geographically through the spread of German and Italian. This position goes back to the Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, who first made the claim in 1873, linguists who take this position often point out that the similarities between the languages are comparatively few. This position was first introduced by the Italian dialectologist Carlo Battisti and this linguistic dispute became politically relevant for the Italian irredentist movement. Italian nationalists interpreted Battistis hypothesis as implying that Romansh, Friulan and Ladin were not separate languages and they used this as an argument to claim the territories where these languages were spoken for Italy

19.
Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field

20.
Latin script
–
Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩

21.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark

22.
Replacement character
–
Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as fï¿½r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character

23.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters

24.
Languages of Switzerland
–
The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. All but Romansh maintain equal status as official languages at the level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation. In 2013, native speakers of German number about 5 million, French number 1.8 million, Italian,645,000, the German region is roughly in the east, north and center, the French part in the west and the Italian area in the south. There remains a small Romansh-speaking native population in Graubünden in the east, the cantons of Fribourg, Bern and Valais are officially bilingual, Graubünden is officially trilingual. In 17 Swiss cantons, German is the official language. In the cantons of Bern, Fribourg and Valais, French is co-official, in the canton of Graubünden, more than half of the population speaks German. In each case, all languages are languages of the respective canton. In Germany Welsch and Welschland refer to Italy, there, the term is antiquated, rarely used, the marked subsidiarity of the Swiss federalism, where many political decisions are taken at municipal or cantonal level, supports this attitude. Nevertheless, in 2013,10. 1%, or about 830,000 of the Swiss residents speak High German aka Standard German at home, but probably mainly due to German immigrants. By the Middle Ages, a difference had developed between the rural cantons of the German-speaking part of Switzerland and the city cantons, divided by views about trade. After the Reformation, all cantons were either Catholic or Protestant, Romandy is the French-speaking part of Switzerland. It covers the area of the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, and Jura as well as the French-speaking parts of the cantons of Bern, Valais,1.9 million people live in Romandy. Standard Swiss French and the French of France are the same language, for example, like some other regions of the French-speaking world, Swiss people use septante instead of soixante-dix and nonante instead of quatre-vingt-dix. In the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg, speakers use instead of the Standard French quatre-vingts. Sou is used throughout Romandy for a 5-centime coin, as is tune when referring to a 5-Swiss-franc piece, historically, the vernacular language used by inhabitants of most parts of Romandy was Franco-Provençal. Franco-Provençal is a language considered to be halfway between the langue doïl and Occitan. Standard French and Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, linguistically, are distinct and mutual intelligibility is limited, increasingly, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan is used only by members of the older generations. The term Romandy does not formally exist in the political system, the television channel Télévision Suisse Romande serves the Romande community across Switzerland, is syndicated to TV5, and CanalSat Romande on 2 October

25.
French language
–
French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth

26.
Italian language
–
By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is a language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City. Italian is spoken by minorities in places such as France, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages, Italian is the fourth most studied language in the world. Italian is a major European language, being one of the languages of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It is the third most widely spoken first language in the European Union with 65 million native speakers, including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries and on other continents, the total number of speakers is around 85 million. Italian is the working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the luxury goods market. Italian has been reported as the fourth or fifth most frequently taught foreign language in the world, Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society. Its development was influenced by other Italian languages and to some minor extent. Its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian, unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latins contrast between short and long consonants. As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive, however, Italian as a language used in Italy and some surrounding regions has a longer history. What would come to be thought of as Italian was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language, and thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the language of Italy. Italian was also one of the recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Italy has always had a dialect for each city, because the cities. Those dialects now have considerable variety, as Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of Regional Italian. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages

27.
Ladin language
–
Ladin is a Romance language consisting of a group of dialects mainly spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in South Tyrol, the Trentino and the province of Belluno by the Ladin people. It exhibits similarities to Swiss Romansh and Friulian, the precise extension of the Ladin language area is the subject of scholarly debates. Ladin should not be confused with Ladino, which, although also Romance, is derived from Old Spanish, Ladin is recognized as a minority language in 54 Italian municipalities belonging to the provinces of South Tyrol, Trentino and Belluno. In the 2011 census,20,548 inhabitants of South Tyrol declared Ladin as their native language, Ladin is an officially recognised language, taught in schools and used in public offices. The following municipalities of South Tyrol have a majority of Ladin speakers and they are spoken in 38 municipalities, but have no official status. Their more precise classification is uncertain, both dialects show a strong resemblance to Trentinian dialect and Eastern Lombard, and scholars debate whether they are Ladin dialects or not. About 23% of the inhabitants from Val di Non and 1. 5% from Val di Sole declared Ladin as their language at the 2011 census. The number of Ladin speakers in those valleys amounts to 8,730, in order to stress the difference between the dialects in Non and Fassa valleys, it has been proposed to distinguish between ladins dolomitiches and ladins nonejes at the next census. As there is no census in the province of Belluno. The provincial administration of Belluno has enacted to identify Ladin as a minority language in additional municipalities, ladinity in the province of Belluno is more ethnic than linguistic. The varieties spoken by Ladin municipalities are Venetian alpine dialects, grammatically no different to those spoken in municipalities that did not declare themselves as Ladin and their language is called Ladino Bellunese. All Ladin dialects spoken in the province of Belluno, including those in the former Tyrolean territories, the name derives from Latin, because Ladin is originally a Vulgar Latin language left over from the Romanized Alps. Ladin is often attributed to be a relic of Vulgar Latin dialects associated with Rhaeto-Romance languages, whether a proto-Romance language ever existed is controversially discussed amongst linguists and historians, a debate known as Questione Ladina. Starting in the 6th century, the Bavarii started moving in from the north, while from the south Gallo-Italic languages started pushing in, only in the more remote mountain valleys did Ladin survive among the isolated populations. Starting in the very early Middle Ages, the area was ruled by the County of Tyrol or the Bishopric of Brixen. The area of Cadore was under the rule of the Republic of Venice, during the period of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and, after 1804, the Austrian Empire, the Ladins underwent a process of Germanization. After the end of World War I in 1918, Italy annexed the part of Tyrol. The programme of Italianization, professed by fascists such as Ettore Tolomei and Benito Mussolini and this included changing Ladin place names into the Italian pronunciation according to Tolomeis Prontuario dei nomi locali dellAlto Adige

28.
Friulian language
–
Friulian or Friulan is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian, documents in Friulian are attested from the 11th century and poetry and literature date as far back as 1300. By the 20th century, there was a revival of interest in the language that has continued to this day, in North America the more common English form is Friulan for both the language and the ethnic identity of the people living in Friuli and abroad. Friulan follows the example of Friulano in Italian, see the reference, Friulan Dictionary, English-Friulan / Friulan-English. A question which causes many debates is the influence of the Latin spoken in Aquileia, some claim that it had peculiar features that later passed into Friulian. 357, wrote a commentary to the Gospel in sermo rusticus, in the language spoken by the people, the language spoken before the arrival of the Romans in 181 BC was of Celtic origin since the inhabitants belonged to the Carni, a Celtic population. In modern Friulian, the words of Celtic origins are many, even influences from the Lombard language - Friuli was one of their strongholds - are very frequent. In Friulian there are also a lot of German, Slovenian and Venetian words, from that evidence, scholars today agree that the formation of Friulian dates back to around 1000, at the same time as other dialects derived from Latin. The first written records of Friulian have been found in administrative acts of the 13th century, but the documents became more frequent in the following century, the main centre at that time was Cividale. The Friulian language has never acquired official status, legal statutes were first written in Latin, then in Venetian, the idea of unity among Ladin, Romansh and Friulian comes from the Italian historical linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who was born in Gorizia. In 1871, he presented his theory that three languages are part of one family, which in the past stretched from Switzerland to Muggia. The three languages are the survivors of this family and all developed differently. Friulian was much influenced by German. Many features that Ascoli thought were peculiar to the Rhaeto-Romance languages can, in fact, in the past, the language borders were wider since in Trieste and Muggia, local variants of Friulian were spoken. The main document about the dialect of Trieste, or tergestino, is Dialoghi piacevoli in dialetto vernacolo triestino, Friuli was, until the 1960s, an area of deep poverty, causing a large number of Friulian speakers to emigrate. Most went to France, Belgium, and Switzerland or outside Europe, to Canada, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States, in those countries, there are associations of Friulian immigrants that try to protect their traditions and language. The first texts in Friulian date back to the 13th century and are commercial or juridical acts. The examples show that Friulian was used together with Latin, which was still the administrative language, the most notable work is Piruç myò doç inculurit, it was composed by an anonymous author from Cividale del Friuli, probably in 1380

29.
Vulgar Latin
–
Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris is a generic term for the nonstandard sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Works written in Latin during classical times used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, because of its nonstandard nature, Vulgar Latin had no official orthography. Vulgar Latin is sometimes also called colloquial Latin, or Common Romance, in Renaissance Latin, Vulgar Latin was called vulgare Latinum or Latinum vulgare. The term common speech, which later became Vulgar Latin, was used by inhabitants of the Roman Empire, traces of their language appear in some inscriptions, such as graffiti or advertisements. The educated population mainly responsible for Classical Latin might also have spoken Vulgar Latin in certain contexts depending on their socioeconomic background, the term was first used improperly in that sense by the pioneers of Romance-language philology, François Juste Marie Raynouard and Friedrich Christian Diez. These terms, as he points out later in the work, are a translation into German of Dantes vulgare latinum and Latinum vulgare, and these names in turn are at the end of a tradition extending to the Roman republic. Latin could be sermo Latinus, but in addition was a variety known as sermo vulgaris, sermo vulgi, sermo plebeius and these modifiers inform post-classical readers that a conversational Latin existed, which was used by the masses in daily speaking and was perceived as lower-class. These vocabulary items manifest no opposition to the written language, there was an opposition to higher-class, or family Latin in sermo familiaris and very rarely literature might be termed sermo nobilis. The supposed sermo classicus is a scholarly fiction unattested in the dictionary, all kinds of sermo were spoken only, not written. If one wanted to refer to what in post-classical times was called classical Latin one resorted to the concept of latinitas or latine. If one spoke in the lingua or sermo Latinus one merely spoke Latin, but if one spoke latine or latinius one spoke good Latin, and formal Latin had latinitas, the original opposition was between formal or implied good Latin and informal or Vulgar Latin. The spoken/written dichotomy is entirely philological, although making it clear that sermo vulgaris existed, the ancients said very little about it. Because it was not transcribed, it can only be studied indirectly, knowledge comes from these chief sources, Solecisms, especially in Late Latin texts. Mention of it by ancient grammarians, including prescriptive grammar texts from the Late Latin period condemning linguistic errors that represent spoken Latin, the comparative method, which reconstructs Proto-Romance, a hypothetical vernacular proto-language from which the Romance languages descended. The original written Latin language was adapted from the spoken language of the Latins, with some minor modifications. As with many languages, over time the spoken language diverged from the written language with the written language remaining somewhat static. Nevertheless, during the period spoken Latin still remained largely common across the Empire. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire rapidly began to change this, the former western provinces became increasingly isolated from the Eastern Roman Empire leading to a rapid divergence in the Latin spoken on either side

30.
Roman Empire
–
Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor

31.
Celtic languages
–
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people speak Celtic languages in the other Celtic diaspora areas of the United States, Canada, Australia, in all these areas, the Celtic languages are now only spoken by minorities though there are continuing efforts at revitalisation. Welsh is the only Celtic language not classified as endangered by UNESCO, the spread to Cape Breton and Patagonia occurred in modern times. SIL Ethnologue lists six living Celtic languages, of four have retained a substantial number of native speakers. These are the Goidelic languages and the Brittonic languages, the other two, Cornish and Manx, died in modern times with their presumed last native speakers in 1777 and 1974 respectively. For both these languages, however, revitalisation movements have led to the adoption of these languages by adults and children, taken together, there were roughly one million native speakers of Celtic languages as of the 2000s. In 2010, there were more than 1.4 million speakers of Celtic languages, shelta, based largely on Irish with influence from an undocumented source. Some forms of Welsh-Romani or Kååle also combined Romany itself with Welsh language, beurla-reagaird, Highland travellers language Celtic divided into various branches, Lepontic, the oldest attested Celtic language. Anciently spoken in Switzerland and in Northern-Central Italy, from the Alps to Umbria, coins with Lepontic inscriptions have been found in Noricum and Gallia Narbonensis. Celtiberian, anciently spoken in the Iberian peninsula, in parts of modern Galicia, Asturias, La Rioja, Aragón, Cantabria, Old Castile, the relationship of Celtiberian with Gallaecian, in the northwest of the peninsula, is uncertain. Gallaecian, anciently spoken in the former Gallaecia, northwest of the peninsula, Gaulish languages, including Galatian and possibly Noric. These languages were spoken in a wide arc from Belgium to Turkey. Brittonic, including the living languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh, before the arrival of Scotti on the Isle of Man in the 9th century, there may have been a Brittonic language in the Isle of Man. Goidelic, including the living languages Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic, scholarly handling of the Celtic languages has been rather argumentative owing to scarceness of primary source data. Other scholars distinguish between P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, putting most of the Gaulish and Brittonic languages in the former group, the P-Celtic languages are sometimes seen as a central innovating area as opposed to the more conservative peripheral Q-Celtic languages. In the P/Q classification schema, the first language to split off from Proto-Celtic was Gaelic and it has characteristics that some scholars see as archaic, but others see as also being in the Brittonic languages

32.
Raetic language
–
Rhaetian /ˈriːʃən/ or Rhaetic /ˈriːtᵻk/ is an ancient language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a mixture of what appear to be Etruscan, Indo-European. The ancient Rhaetic language is not the same as one of the modern Romance languages of the same Alpine region, known as Rhaeto-Romance, but both are sometimes referred to as Rhaetian. The ancient Roman sources mention the Rhaetic people as being reputedly of Etruscan origin, in his Natural History, Pliny wrote about Alpine peoples, adjoining these are the Rhaeti and Vindelici. All are divided into a number of states, the Rhaeti are believed to be people of Tuscan race driven out by the Gauls, their leader was named Rhaetus. Plinys comment on a leader named Rhaetus is typical of mythologized origins of ancient peoples, the name of the Venetic goddess Reitia has commonly been discerned in the Rhaetic finds, but the two names do not seem to be linked. Many inscriptions are known, but most of them are short and fairly repetitive. Rhaetic became extinct by the 3rd century AD, with its speakers eventually adopting Vulgar Latin in the south and Germanic in the north, Rhaeti Rhaetic alphabet Aegean languages Etruscan language Etruscan civilization Tyrsenian languages Camunic language Zavaroni, Adolfo, Rhaetic inscriptions, Tripod

33.
Alemannic language
–
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. The name derives from the ancient Germanic alliance of tribes known as the Alemanni. S, ISO 639-3 distinguishes four languages, gsw, swg, wae and gct. At this level, the distinction between a language and a dialect frequently is considered a cultural and political question, in part because linguists have failed to agree on a clear standard, the following variants comprise Alemannic, Swabian. Unlike most other Alemannic dialects, it does not retain the Middle High German monophthongs û, î, for this reason, Swabian is sometimes used in opposition to Alemannic. Retain German initial /k/ as rather than fricativising to as in High Alemannic, subvariants, Lake Constance Alemannic Upper-Rhine Alemannic in Southwestern Baden and its variant Alsatian Alemán Coloniero Basel German High Alemannic. Complete the High German consonant shift by fricativising initial /k/ to, subvariants, Bernese German Zürich German Vorarlbergisch Liechtensteinisch Highest Alemannic does not have the hiatus diphthongisation of other dialects of German. For example, instead of, instead of, subvariants, Walliser German Walser German Note that the Alemannic dialects of Switzerland are often called Swiss German or Schwiizertüütsch. The oldest known texts in Alemannic are brief Elder Futhark inscriptions dating to the sixth century, in the Old High German period, the first coherent texts are recorded in the St. Gall and Reichenau Island, a considerable part of the Old High German corpus has Alemannic traits. Alemannic Middle High German is less prominent, in spite of the Codex Manesse compiled by Johannes Hadlaub of Zürich, the rise of the Old Swiss Confederacy from the fourteenth century leads to the creation of Alemannic Swiss chronicles. Huldrych Zwinglis bible translation of the 1520s was in an Alemannic variant of Early Modern High German, the 1665 revision of the Froschauer Bible removed the Alemannic elements, approaching the language used by Luther. Johann Peter Hebel published his Allemannische Gedichte in 1803, Swiss authors often consciously employ Helvetisms within Standard German, notably Jeremias Gotthelf in his novels set in the Emmental, and more recently Tim Krohn in his Quatemberkinder. The diminutive is used frequently in all Alemannic dialects, northern and eastern dialects use the suffix -le, southern dialects use the suffix -li. Depending on dialect, thus, little house could be Heisle, Hüüsle, a significant difference between the high and low variants is the pronunciation of ch after the front vowels and consonants. In Standard German and the variants, this is a palatal, whereas in the higher variants

34.
Bavarian language
–
Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the southeast of the German language area, largely covered by Bavaria and Austria. It forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants, the Bavarians as a group formed in the early medieval period, as the population of the Duchy of Bavaria, forming the south-eastern part of the kingdom of Germany. The Old High German documents from the area of Bavaria are identified as Altbairisch, the dialectal separation of Upper German into East Upper German and West Upper German becomes more tangible in the Middle High German period, from about the 12th century. Three main dialect groups in Bavarian are, Northern Bavarian, mainly spoken in Upper Palatinate, southern Bavarian in Tyrol, South Tyrol, Carinthia, Styria, and the southern parts of Salzburg and Burgenland. Differences are clearly noticeable within those three subgroups, which in Austria often coincide with the borders of the particular states, for example, each of the accents of Carinthia, Styria, and Tyrol can be easily recognised. Also, there is a difference between eastern and western central Bavarian, roughly coinciding with the border between Austria and Bavaria. In addition, the Viennese dialect has some characteristics distinguishing it from all other dialects, in Vienna, minor, but recognizable, variations are characteristic for distinct districts of the city. In contrast to other varieties of German, Bavarian differs sufficiently from Standard German to make it difficult for native speakers to adopt standard pronunciation. All educated Bavarians and Austrians, however, can read, write and understand Standard German, in those regions, Standard German is restricted to use as the language of writing and the media. It is therefore referred to as Schriftdeutsch rather than the usual term Hochdeutsch. Bavaria and Austria officially use Standard German as the medium of education. This accent usually only exists in families where Bavarian is spoken regularly, families that do not use Bavarian at home usually use Standard German instead. In Austria, some parts of grammar and spelling are taught in Standard German lessons, as reading and writing in Bavarian is generally not taught at schools, almost all literate speakers of the language prefer to use Standard German for writing. Regional authors and literature may play a role in education as well, although there exist grammars, vocabularies, and a translation of the Bible in Bavarian, there is no common orthographic standard. Poetry is written in various Bavarian dialects, and many pop songs use the language as well, although Bavarian as a spoken language is in daily use in its region, Standard German, often with strong regional influence, is preferred in the mass media. On the use of Bavarian and standard German in Austria see Austrian German, ludwig Thoma is a noted author who wrote works such as Lausbubengeschichten in Bavarian. There is a Bavarian Wikipedia, completely in Bavarian, notes, The phoneme /h/ is frequently realised as or word-internally, while it is realised as word-initially. Intervocalic /s/ can be voiced to, Bavarian has an extensive vowel inventory, as is common for Germanic languages

35.
Grisons
–
Grisons is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares borders with the cantons of Ticino, Uri, Glarus and St. Gallen and international borders with Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein. The name Graubünden translates as the Grey Leagues, referring to the origin in three local alliances, the League of Gods House, the Grey League, and the League of the Ten Jurisdictions. Grisons is also home to three of Switzerlands ethnic groups and the subsequent languages of Swiss German, Italian and Romansh are all native to the canton and it is the only officially trilingual canton and the only canton where the Romansh language has official status. Area-wise Grisons is Switzerlands largest canton at 7,105.2 square kilometres,19. 2% larger than the Canton of Bern, only about a third of this is commonly regarded as productive land of which forests cover about a fifth of the total area. The canton is entirely mountainous, comprising the highlands of the Rhine, in its southeastern part lies the only official Swiss National Park. In its northern part the mountains were formed as part of the thrust fault that was declared a geologic UNESCO World Heritage Site, under the name Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona, in 2008. Another Biosphere Reserve is the Biosfera Val Müstair adjacent to the Swiss National Park whereas Ela Nature Park is one of the regionally supported parks. Elevations in the Grison Alps include Tödi, at 3,614 metres, many of the mountain ranges feature extensive glaciers, such as at the Adula, the Albula, the Silvretta, the Bernina, the Bregaglia and the Rätikon ranges. The mountain ranges in the area are very deep, some being considered the deepest valleys in Europe. These valleys were settled by the Raetians. Grisons borders on the cantons of St. Gallen to the northwest, Glarus, Uri to the west and it also shares international borders with Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein. The inhabitants of Grisons are called Bündner or Grisonians, most of the lands of the canton were once part of a Roman province called Raetia which was established in 15 BC. The current capital of Grisons, Chur, was known as Curia in Roman times, the area later was part of the lands of the diocese at Chur. In 1367 the League of Gods House was founded to resist the power of the Bishop of Chur. This was followed by the establishment of the Grey League, sometimes called Oberbund, the name Grey League is derived from the homespun grey clothes worn by the people and was used exclusively after 16 March 1424. The name of this later gave its name to the canton of Grisons. A third league was established in 1436 by the people of ten bailiwicks in the former Toggenburg countship, the league was called League of the Ten Jurisdictions

36.
Municipalities of Switzerland
–
Municipalities are the lowest level of administrative division in Switzerland. Each municipality is part of one of the Swiss cantons, which form the Swiss Confederation, in most cantons municipalities are also part of districts or other sub-cantonal administrative divisions. There are 2,294 municipalities as of January 2016 and their populations range between several hundred thousand, and a few dozen people, and their territory between 0.32 km² and 439 km². The beginnings of the municipality system date back to the Helvetic Republic. Under the Old Swiss Confederacy, citizenship was granted by each town and these citizens enjoyed access to community property and in some cases additional protection under the law. Additionally, the towns and the rural villages had differing rights. The creation of a uniform Swiss citizenship, which applied equally for citizens of the old towns and their tenants and servants, led to conflict. The wealthier villagers and urban citizens held rights to forests, common land and other municipal property which they did not want to share with the new citizens, the compromise solution, which was written into the municipal laws of the Helvetic Republic, is still valid today. Two politically separate but often geographically similar organizations were created, the first, the so-called municipality, was a political community formed by election and its voting body consists of all resident citizens. However, the community land and property remained with the local citizens who were gathered together into the Bürgergemeinde. During the Mediation era, and especially during the Restoration era, many political municipalities were abolished and limits were placed on the exercise of political rights for everyone except the members of the Bürgergemeinde. In the Regeneration era, the revolutions of the common people helped to restore some rights again in a few cantons. In other cantons, the Bürgergemeinden were able to power as political communities. In the city of Zurich it wasnt until the Municipal Act of 1866 that the municipality came back into existence. The relationship between the municipality and the Bürgergemeinde was often dominated by the latters ownership of community property. Often the administration and profit from the property were held by the Bürgergemeinden, leaving the political municipality dependent on the Bürgergemeinde for money. It wasnt until the municipality acquired rights over property that served the public and taxes. For example, in the city of Bern, it wasnt until after the property division of 1852 that the municipality had the right to levy taxes

37.
German language
–
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form

38.
Occitan language
–
Occitan, also known as lenga dòc by its native speakers, is a Romance language. It is spoken in southern France, Italys Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Spains Val dAran, collectively, Occitan is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese. However, there is controversy about the unity of the language, others include Catalan in this family, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects is similar to the distance among different Occitan dialects. In fact, Catalan was considered an Occitan dialect until the end of the 19th century, today, Occitan is an official language in Catalonia, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken in the Val dAran. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the preferred language for use in the Val dAran. Unlike other Romance languages such as French or Spanish, there is no written standard language called Occitan. Instead, there are competing norms for writing Occitan, some of which attempt to be pan-dialectal, There are also significant lexical differences, where some dialects have words cognate with French, and others have Catalan and Spanish cognates. Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of mutual intelligibility, the long-term survival of Occitan is in grave doubt. According to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, four of the six dialects of Occitan are considered severely endangered. The name Occitan comes from lenga dòc, òc being the Occitan word for yes and this was not, of course, the only defining characteristic of each group. The word òc came from Vulgar Latin hoc, while oïl originated from Latin hoc illud, Old Catalan, and now the Catalan of Northern Catalonia also have hoc. Other Romance languages derive their word for yes from the Latin sic, thus, etc. such as Spanish sí, Eastern Lombard sé, Sicilian and Italian sì, or Portuguese sim. French uses si to answer yes in response to questions that are asked in the negative sense, the name Occitan is sometimes considered a neologism, however, it was attested around 1300 as occitanus, a crossing of oc and aquitanus. For many centuries, the Occitan dialects were referred to as Limousin or Provençal, after Frédéric Mistrals Félibrige movement in the 19th century, Provençal achieved the greatest literary recognition and so became the most popular term for Occitan. The term first came into fashion in Italy, currently, linguists use the terms Provençal and Limousin strictly to refer to specific varieties within Occitania, keeping the name Occitan for the language as a whole. Many non-specialists, however, continue to refer to the language as Provençal, NO·L LI TOLRÀ NO·L LI DEVEDARÀ NI NO LEN DECEBRÀ. Nec societatem non AURÀ, si per castellum recuperare NON O FA, et si recuperare potuerit in potestate Froterio et Raimundo LO TORNARÀ, carolingian litanies, both written and sung in Latin, were answered to in Old Occitan by the audience. Occitan was the vehicle for the poetry of the medieval troubadours and trobairises, At that time

39.
Lombard language
–
Lombard is a member of the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland, the two main varieties have significant differences and are not always mutually intelligible. Lombard is considered a minority language, structurally separated from Italian, by the Ethnologue reference catalogue and that fact is being obscured, to some extent, both by the use of Italian orthography to write the languages and by influence from Italian. Historically, the vast majority of Lombards spoke only Lombard, Lombard is from the Gallo-Italian subdivision of the Italo-Romance group that shares common features with Gallo-Romance languages and other Western Romance languages. The varieties of the Italian provinces of Milan, Varese, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza, Pavia and Mantua belong to the Western subgroup, and the ones of Bergamo, Brescia and Cremona are Eastern. All the varieties spoken in the Swiss areas are Western, also, dialects from the Piedmontese provinces of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and Novara, the Valsesia valley, and the city of Tortona are closer to Western Lombard than to Piedmontese. The koiné is similar to Milanese and the varieties of the provinces on the Italian side of the border. There is extant literature in other varieties of Lombard, for example La masséra da bé, standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. However, the status of Lombard is quite different between the Swiss and Italian areas, which justifies the view that the Swiss areas have now become the stronghold of Lombard. In the Swiss areas, the local Lombard varieties are generally better preserved, no negative feelings are associated with the use of Lombard in everyday life, even with complete strangers. Some radio and television programmes, particularly comedies, are occasionally broadcast by the Swiss Italian-speaking broadcasting company in Lombard, moreover, it is common for people from the street to answer in Lombard in spontaneous interviews. Even some television ads in Lombard have been reported, the major research institution working on Lombard dialects is located in Bellinzona, Switzerland, there is no comparable institution in Italy. In December 2004, the CDE released a dictionary in five volumes, today, in most urban areas of Italian Lombardy, people under 40 years old speak almost exclusively Italian in their daily lives because of schooling and television broadcasts in Italian. However, in Periferic Lombardy, Lombard is still vital, now, the political party most supportive of Lombard is the Northern League. Thus, speaking a dialect of some minority languages might be controversial in Italy. The popularity of artists singing their lyrics in some Lombard dialect is also a relatively new. New York 2003, Facts On File. p.40, itinerario antologico-critico dalle origini ai nostri giorni - Hoepli,2003. A comprehensive description of a set of writing rules for all the Lombard varieties of Switzerland and Italy, with IPA transcriptions

Romance languages
–
Today, around 800 million people are native speakers worldwide, mainly in Europe, Africa and the Americas, but also elsewhere. Additionally, the major Romance languages have many speakers and are in widespread use as lingua francas. This is especially the case for French, which is in use throughout Central and West Africa, Madagascar, Mauritius. Th

Andeer
–
Andeer is a municipality in the Viamala Region in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. In 2009 Clugin and Pignia merged into Andeer, Roman coins discovered near Andeer indicate that there was a Roman presence in the area during the time of the Roman province of Raetia. The name of the settlement was presumably Lapidaria, and it would have already been a

1.
Andeer

2.
Andeer from a 1932 photograph

Sagogn, Switzerland
–
Sagogn is a municipality in the Surselva Region in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. Sagogn is first mentioned in 765 as Secanio, Sagogn has an area, as of 2006, of 7 km2. Of this area,23. 2% is used for agricultural purposes, of the rest of the land,4. 7% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. Before 2017, the municipality was loca

1.
Sagogn

2.
Vorderrhein river, with Sagogn in the background

3.
Sagogn in winter

4.
Church of S. Maria

Swiss National Park
–
The Swiss National Park is located in the Western Rhaetian Alps, in eastern Switzerland. It is within the canton of Graubünden, between Zernez, S-chanf, Scuol, and the Fuorn Pass in the Engadin valley on the border with Italy and it is part of the worldwide UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. It was founded on 1 August 1914, the holiday of Switzerland. It wa

1.
Swiss National Park

Sgraffito
–
The Italian past participle sgraffiato is also used, especially of pottery. Sgraffito and sgraffiti come from the Italian word graffiare, ultimately from the Greek γράφειν, related terms include graffito and graffiti. Sgraffito on walls has been used in Europe since classical times, it was popularized in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, in com

Guarda, Switzerland
–
Guarda is a former municipality in Inn District in the Swiss canton of Graubünden. On 1 January 2015 the former municipalities of Ardez, Guarda, Tarasp, Ftan, Guarda was awarded the Wakker Prize for the preservation of its architectural heritage in 1975. Guarda is first mentioned in 1160 as Warda, Guarda had an area, as of 2006, of 31.5 km2. Of thi

1.
Guarda Village

3.
Fountain in the village of Guarda

4.
Romansh sgraffito in Guarda

Switzerland
–
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switz

1.
Founded in 44 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus, Augusta Raurica was the first Roman settlement on the Rhine and is now among the most important archaeological sites in Switzerland.

2.
Flag

3.
The 1291 Bundesbrief (Federal charter)

4.
The Old Swiss Confederacy from 1291 (dark green) to the sixteenth century (light green) and its associates (blue). In the other colors are shown the subject territories.

Language family
–
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the pr

1.
Principal language families of the world (and in some cases geographic groups of families). For greater detail, see Distribution of languages in the world.

Indo-European languages
–
The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with ove

1.
Franz Bopp, pioneer in the field of comparative linguistic studies.

Italic languages
–
The Italic languages are a subfamily of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by Italic peoples. They include Latin and its descendants as well as a number of languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan. With over 800 million native speakers, the Italic languages constitute the second most widely spoken bra

1.
Approximate distribution of languages in Iron Age Italy during the sixth century BC. (Note: most of these are not Italic languages.)

Western Romance languages
–
Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian-Romance branches as well as northern Italian, there is also much higher morphological similarity between Spanish and Italian dialects than between Italian and Fre

1.
Classification of Romance languages

Gallo-Romance languages
–
The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes sensu stricto the Oïl languages and the Franco-Provençal language. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Rhaeto-Romance, Occitano-Romance, the Gallo-Romance group includes, The Langues doïl, or Oïl languages. These include Standard French, Picard, Walloon, L

1.
Historical area of development for strict Gallo-Romance (Oïl languages and Arpitan).

Rhaeto-Romance languages
–
Rhaeto-Romance, or Rhaetian, is a traditional subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in north and north-eastern Italy and in Switzerland. The name Rhaeto-Romance refers to the former Roman province of Rhaetia, the linguistic basis of the subfamily is discussed in the so-called Questione Ladina. The area where Rhaeto-Romance languages wer

1.
Rhaeto-Romance

Rumantsch Grischun
–
Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language along with German, French and Italian since 1996. It is sometimes grouped with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, Romansh has also been heavily influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retrea

Sursilvan
–
Sursilvan is a group of dialects of the Romansh language spoken in the Swiss district of Surselva. It is the most widely spoken variety of Romansh with 17,897 people within the Surselva District naming Romansh as a spoken language in the Swiss census of 2000. The most closely related variety is Sutsilvan, which is spoken in the area located to the

1.
Historical distribution of the dialects of Romansh, German, and Italian in Graubünden: Sursilvan

Vallader
–
Vallader is a variety of the Romansh language spoken in the Lower Engadine valley of southeast Switzerland, between Martina and Zernez. It is also used as a language in the nearby community of Val Müstair. In 2008, schools in the Val Müstair switched from Vallader to Rumantsch Grischun as their written language, the name of the dialect is derived f

1.
Historical distribution of the dialects of Romansh, German, and Italian in Graubünden: Surmiran

Sutsilvan
–
Romansh has also been recognized as a national language of Switzerland since 1938 and as an official language along with German, French and Italian since 1996. It is sometimes grouped with Ladin and Friulian as a Rhaeto-Romance language, Romansh has also been heavily influenced by German in vocabulary and morphosyntax. The language gradually retrea

Jauer dialect (Romansh)
–
Jauer is a dialect of Romansh that is spoken in the Val Müstair. It is closely related to the dialect of the Lower Engadine. Other features distinguishing Jauer from Vallader include the placement of stress on the syllable of certain verbs. In addition, stressed /a/ is diphthongized in Jauer, all three traits can be seen in the verb to sing, which

1.
Pronunciation of eu ('I') in the dialects of the Lower Engadine and the Val Müstair, as attested in 1962.

2.
Historical distribution of the dialects of Romansh, German, and Italian in Graubünden: Jauer

Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind

1.
Writing systems

2.
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts

3.
Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations

4.
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia

Latin script
–
Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the Interna

1.
Latin Roman

International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, act

1.
X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]

Replacement character
–
Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in t

1.
Replacement character

Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard

1.
Logo of the Unicode Consortium

Languages of Switzerland
–
The four national languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian and Romansh. All but Romansh maintain equal status as official languages at the level within the Federal Administration of the Swiss Confederation. In 2013, native speakers of German number about 5 million, French number 1.8 million, Italian,645,000, the German region is roughly

1.
Arpitan language area map with place names in arpitan and historic political divisions.

2.
Languages of Switzerland

French language
–
French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and

1.
The "arrêt" signs (French for "stop") are used in Canada while the international stop, which is also a valid French word, is used in France as well as other French-speaking countries and regions.

2.
Regions where French is the main language

3.
Town sign in Standard Arabic and French at the entrance of Rechmaya in Lebanon.

Italian language
–
By most measures, Italian, together with Sardinian, is the closest to Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is a language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City. Italian is spoken by minorities in places such as France, Montenegro, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Crimea and Tunisia and by large expatriate communities in the Americas. Many speakers

1.
Dante Alighieri (above) and Petrarch (below) were influential in establishing their Tuscan dialect as the most prominent literary language in all of Italy in the Late Middle Ages

2.
The geographic distribution of the Italian language in the world: large Italian-speaking communities are shown in green; light blue indicates areas where the Italian language was used officially during the Italian colonial period.

4.
Pietro Bembo was an influential figure in the development of the Italian language from the Tuscan dialect, as a literary medium, codifying the language for standard modern usage

Ladin language
–
Ladin is a Romance language consisting of a group of dialects mainly spoken in the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy in South Tyrol, the Trentino and the province of Belluno by the Ladin people. It exhibits similarities to Swiss Romansh and Friulian, the precise extension of the Ladin language area is the subject of scholarly debates. Ladin shou

1.
Ladin

2.
Ladin farmers in 1960s La Val, South Tyrol

3.
Ladin school in Santa Cristina

4.
Trilingual traffic sign

Friulian language
–
Friulian or Friulan is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speakers, the vast majority of whom also speak Italian, documents in Friulian are attested from the 11th century and poetry and literature date as far back as 1300. By the 20th century, the

1.
Historical linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli presented the theory that Ladin, Romansh and Friulian are from the same family

2.
Historical flag of Friûl

3.
Road sign in Italian and Friulian

4.
Sign of the Universitât dâl Friûl in Udine

Vulgar Latin
–
Vulgar Latin or Sermo Vulgaris is a generic term for the nonstandard sociolects of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Works written in Latin during classical times used Classical Latin rather than Vulgar Latin, because of its nonstandard nature, Vulgar Latin had no official orthography. Vulgar Latin is sometimes also called colloquia

1.
Extract of the Oaths of Strasbourg, the earliest French text.

2.
The Roman Empire in 117 AD

3.
The Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of my Cid) is the earliest Spanish text.

Roman Empire
–
Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,

1.
The Augustus of Prima Porta (early 1st century AD)

2.
Aureus of Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.

3.
A segment of the ruins of Hadrian's Wall in northern England

Celtic languages
–
The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. Modern Celtic languages are spoken on the north-western edge of Europe, notably in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall. There are also a number of Welsh speakers in the Patagonia area of Argentina. Some people spea

1.
Classification of Indo-European languages. (click to enlarge)

Raetic language
–
Rhaetian /ˈriːʃən/ or Rhaetic /ˈriːtᵻk/ is an ancient language spoken in the ancient region of Rhaetia in the Eastern Alps in pre-Roman and Roman times. It is documented by a number of short inscriptions in two variants of the Etruscan alphabet. Its linguistic categorization is not clearly established, and it presents a mixture of what appear to be

1.
Retic culture and inscriptions

2.
Rhaetian

Alemannic language
–
Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family. The name derives from the ancient Germanic alliance of tribes known as the Alemanni. S, ISO 639-3 distinguishes four languages, gsw, swg, wae and gct. At this level, the distinction between a language and a dialect frequently is considered a cultural and po

1.
The traditional distribution area of Western Upper German (=Alemannic) dialect features in the 19th and 20th century

Bavarian language
–
Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the southeast of the German language area, largely covered by Bavaria and Austria. It forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants, the Bavarians as a group formed in the early medieval period, as the population of the Duchy of Bavaria, forming the

1.
Public sign combining Standard German and Bavarian.

2.
Location map of Bavarian

Grisons
–
Grisons is the largest and easternmost canton of Switzerland. The canton shares borders with the cantons of Ticino, Uri, Glarus and St. Gallen and international borders with Italy, Austria and Liechtenstein. The name Graubünden translates as the Grey Leagues, referring to the origin in three local alliances, the League of Gods House, the Grey Leagu

1.
The Upper Engadin valley near St Moritz

2.
Location in Switzerland

3.
Chur, capital of Graubünden seen to the west and the Rhine valley towards its source.

4.
Jörg Jenatsch was a major and divisive figure during the Bündner Wirren (1618–1639).

Municipalities of Switzerland
–
Municipalities are the lowest level of administrative division in Switzerland. Each municipality is part of one of the Swiss cantons, which form the Swiss Confederation, in most cantons municipalities are also part of districts or other sub-cantonal administrative divisions. There are 2,294 municipalities as of January 2016 and their populations ra

German language
–
German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other member

1.
Old Frisian (Alt-Friesisch)

2.
The widespread popularity of the Bible translated into German by Martin Luther helped establish modern German

3.
Examples of German language in Namibian everyday life

4.
German-language newspapers in the U.S. in 1922

Occitan language
–
Occitan, also known as lenga dòc by its native speakers, is a Romance language. It is spoken in southern France, Italys Occitan Valleys, Monaco, and Spains Val dAran, collectively, Occitan is also spoken in the linguistic enclave of Guardia Piemontese. However, there is controversy about the unity of the language, others include Catalan in this fam

1.
Occitan

2.
"Speak French, Be Clean" written across the wall of a Southern French school

3.
This bilingual street sign in Toulouse, like many such signs found in historical parts of the city, is maintained primarily for its antique charm; it is typical of what little remains of the lenga d'òc in southern French cities.

Lombard language
–
Lombard is a member of the Cisalpine or Gallo-Italic group within the Romance languages. It is spoken natively in Northern Italy and Southern Switzerland, the two main varieties have significant differences and are not always mutually intelligible. Lombard is considered a minority language, structurally separated from Italian, by the Ethnologue ref

2.
Julius Caesar 's Commentarii de Bello Gallico is one of the most famous classical Latin texts of the Golden Age of Latin. The unvarnished, journalistic style of this patrician general has long been taught as a model of the urbane Latin officially spoken and written in the floruit of the Roman republic.